CONTENTS

HOW TO TEACH BEGINNERS 17 WEATHER: How to 31 PREPOSITIONS: 7

Teach Weather Super Easy Activities for
3 MUST READ: From Teaching Prepositions of
ESL Zero to Hero: 18 WEATHER: New Ideas Time
How to Teach Absolute for Teaching the Weather
Beginners 32 PREPOSITIONS:
19 WEATHER: 5 Fun Turn Right, Go Left:
4 MUST READ: Top 8 Tips Games that Teach the Practicing Prepositions
on Teaching Absolute Weather of Place
Beginners
20 DAYS OF THE WEEK: 33 WRITING: Yes We Can
5 MUST READ: Beginning How To Teach Days Of Write! Putting Pen to
at the Beginning: What The Week Paper for Beginners
You Need to Know if
You Teach Absolute 21 QUESTIONS: How 34 WRITING: Wish You
Beginners to Teach Question Were Here: Beginning
Structures Level Writing Made
6 MUST READ: Where Simple
Do We Even Start? 5 22 TIME: How To Teach
Strategies for Teaching Time: Telling Time 35 LISTENING: 5 Easy
the Beginning ESL Activities And Games Listening Games for ESL
Student Beginners
23 TIME: What Time Do
7 MUST READ: How You Have? Telling Time 36 LISTENING: The Right
to Teach English to Activities Stuff: 3 Brilliant Beginner
Beginners Listening Activities
24 DIRECTIONS: How To
8 BASIC VOCABULARY: Teach Directions 37 PRESENT SIMPLE: How
What Do You See? 8 to Teach Present Simple
Steps to Teaching Basic 25 DIRECTIONS: You Can to Complete Beginners
Vocabulary Get There from Here:
The Keys to Teaching 38 TO BE: How to Teach
9 GAMES: How To Teach Your Students to Give the Verb “To Be” to
Basic English Using Directions Beginners
Games: The Original
Hangman 26 TOTAL PHYSICAL 39 TO BE - PAST: How to
RESPONSE: TPR Tricks: Teach the Past Simple
10 DESCRIPTIONS: How to 5 Fabulous Ways to Use Tense – Verb to Be
Teach Descriptions Total Physical Response
in the ESL Classroom
11 GAMES: How to Teach
Using Games 27 BODY: Simon Says
You’ll Love these Games
12 FLASHCARDS: How To for Teaching Anatomy
Use Printable Flashcards Vocabulary
For Teaching ESL
28 PREPOSITIONS: How
13 NUMBERS: How to to Teach Prepositions of
Teach Numbers Time

14 NUMBERS: How to 29 PREPOSITIONS: How

Teach Ordinal Numbers To Teach Prepositions Of
Place
15 NUMBERS: As Easy as
OneTwoThree: 10 Ways 30 PREPOSITIONS: On
to Practice Numbers in Your Marks: 7 Super
the ESL Classroom Easy Activities for
Teaching Prepositions of
16 SHAPES: How to Teach Location
Shapes
From ESL Zero to Hero:
How to Teach Absolute Beginners
IN TODAY’S GLOBALIZED WORLD,
MOST BEGINNER ESL STUDENTS
HAVE HAD SOME CONTACT WITH
THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE, USUALLY
THROUGH THE INTERNET, MOVIES OR
TV.
They have most likely studied English
at some point in their lives and aban-
doned their studies – they are often
referred to as false beginners. But ev-
ery now and then, we come across an
absolute beginner, someone who has
had so little exposure to English, they
can’t even handle the most basic greet-
ings, verbs or vocabulary. Whether you
are teaching a complete group of abso-
lute beginners, or a few within a group
of false beginners, here are some tips
that will help your students go from ESL
zeroes to heroes!
HOW TO Teach Absolute
Beginners
1 PRIORITIZE
LEARNING GOALS
Absolute beginners have had so
little exposure to the English lan-
guage, they have absolutely nothing
to build on. Naturally, you’ll start with
the basics, but consider what they’ll
need to know first. Does it make sense
to start with a list of foods in English? Or
colors or numbers? Probably not. What
they need to know first is how to intro-
duce themselves and greet others. The
natural progression from there is the
use of the verb “to be” (I am from... He
is from..., etc.). Then you’ll progress on
to possessives (my country, your name,
his family) and so on... Give priority to
the language they will need first and
foremost.
2 IDEA OF “SPEAKING ENGLISH” IS TOO
DON’T ASSUME ANYTHING
Don’t make assumptions about
what your students know. Assume
they know nothing. For example, to
practice the verb to be, you ask them
what nationalities they are, only to find
out they don’t know how to say national-
ities in English. Countries and nation-
alities should be taught first, and then
practiced with the verb “to be”. And this
goes for a multitude of vocabulary and
expressions. Don’t assume a student
will be able to answer you if you ask,
“How are you?” Absolute beginners
won’t know how to reply, unless you’ve
specifically taught them.
3 CELEBRATE
SMALL ACHIEVEMENTS
Absolute beginners will tell you they
don’t speak English – till the very end
of the course. What they’re thinking is
that they don’t speak English fluently,
or like you, for example. But make sure
they’re aware of what they can do. If on
the first day of class they’ve learned to
greet each in English, end your lesson
by celebrating this, “Congratulations!
You can now introduce yourself and
greet each other in English”. Take
the focus away from what they can’t
do and focus on what they can do in-
stead. This proves to be tremendously
encouraging!
4 USE THEIR SENSES
Absolute beginners may not
have enough knowledge to under-
stand explanations, synonyms, defi-
nitions, i.e. anything you describe
with words. Instead, use their senses
to maximize learning. The easiest to
use with beginners are visual aids like
flashcards, but don’t’ forget to include
plenty of gestures, as well as real life
objects. The use of realia will allow you
to utilize several senses at the same
time, and it’s often more engaging than
two-dimensional pictures. Don’t forget
to use things they can smell and taste,
too!
5 SHOW, DON’T TELL
Because they haven’t been ex-
posed to the English language enough,
try to minimize their reading of dia-
logues and conversations, and act
out the situations, instead. Consider
this: when you teach students to reply
to a “How are you?” do you have them
read this short exchange first or just act
it out directly? Of course, it’s a lot bet-
ter to simply show them how to reply.
This goes for most of the expressions
and functions they will have to learn.
6 BUILD ON WHAT THEY’VE
LEARNED BEFORE
It is essential for absolute beginners
to review what they’ve previously
learned, and it’s a great idea to start
each lesson with a brief review. But
you can also re-use previously taught
language points and introduce them
into a new context. Say you are now
teaching your students how to ask for
directions. Student A is walking down
the street with a friend, Student B, when
they run into Student C. A introduces
B to C (they review how to introduce
someone), and then C asks A for direc-
tions.
7
KEEP IT REAL
Just because students are ab-
solute beginners, it doesn’t mean they
can’t handle real life situations. You
should still teach in context, and pro-
vide as many examples of real life
situations and real props as you can.
Even though real maps, brochures or
catalogues are filled with vocabulary
they won’t understand, it is important to
help your absolute beginners deal with,
precisely, these types of things. Show
them how to pinpoint the information
they may need like a phone number,
address or website. Make sure they un-
derstand that it doesn’t matter that they
can’t read the entire brochure, the im-
portant thing is that they learn to obtain
what they need from it.
BY THE TIME YOUR ABSOLUTE BEGIN-
NERS FINISH THEIR COURSE, THEY
WILL PROBABLY STILL NOT FEEL
CONFIDENT ENOUGH TO SAY THEY
“SPEAK” ENGLISH. THAT’S OK. THE
VAGUE IN THIS CONTEXT.
Try providing them with some specific
examples of what they can do now: go
shopping by themselves, ask for assis-
tance, order food in a restaurant, etc.
Ask them to remember what it was like
when they knew none of this. Tell them
they are your heroes for learning so
much and overcoming their language
barriers. They will feel like heroes, too!
3
Top 8 Tips on Teaching
Absolute Beginners
When we talk about low-level students,
we’re not talking about teaching the
students about the difference between
present simple and past simple tenses.
We are talking about a level 0 student
who can barely string a single sentence
together or has utter difficulties when
answering the question ‘How are you?’
Teaching absolute beginners can be
quite a tough task, especially for native
speakers with little understanding of the
L1 of the students. Nevertheless, with a
little bit of help and the right guidance,
a teacher can definitely make a strong
improvement to the student providing
them with the confidence they need to
take them to the next level.
HOW TO TEACH
COMPLETE BEGINNERS
1 SMILING HELPS
Ah yes, number one on the list, a
smile is something that can be under-
stood on a universal level. When build-
ing a rapport with your absolute begin-
ner, smiling will build trust and show him
or her that you are there in a supportive
capacity. Body language is also a useful
tool when teaching English, as it is often
said that about 70% of our communi-
cation is done through body language.
Body language is great when trying to
get answers from student, showing if the
student is incorrect, or even if you want
to elicit an answer from a student.
2 FIND AN ASSISTANT
When you’re teaching a group of
absolute beginners, it is more than likely
that you will have one of the students in
the class who would be a little bit above
the others. You should use this student
to your advantage and make them your
class assistant. This class assistant can
help communicate the task, vocabulary
and other useful things that the other
students may not yet have an under-
standing. By finding an assistant in the
class, this makes things easier and cre-
ates a great atmosphere in the class
where the students can help each other
in the learning process.
3 USE REALIA, FLASHCARDS
AND OTHER VISUALS
Use what, I hear you ask? Realia is ESL
jargon for anything that is ‘real’. Realia is
great method when it comes to teaching
vocabulary, as students can are able to
4
simply put the vocabulary with a real life
object. This can be done with practically
anything, from the whiteboard marker
in your hand, or even flowers from the
garden. Another common form of realia
is photos. Photos make a great to show
the students an object or person that is
real. One activity that works well with
absolute beginners is learning about
families. Both you and the students can
take your family photos into the class
and share them while describing the rel-
ative in the photo. Flashcards and other
visuals, such as PowerPoint presenta-
tions are an ideal way to learning new
vocabulary.
4
KNOW A FEW PHRASES IN
THE STUDENT’S LANGUAGE
While many language schools discour-
age any usage of the teacher using
the L1 of the student, we find that us-
ing a few words and phrases here and
there prove to be extremely helpful. This
helps with getting your point across in
the class, and teaching some of the
simpler vocabulary. While many ESLers
have been converted to the theory that
students will learn by being constantly
exposed to the language, they should
think back to their own time at school
when they were learning a different lan-
guage. Surely if native English speaker
with a level 0 in Japanese walked into a
class where the teacher spoke only Jap-
anese, then the level 0 English-speaker
would probably have gained very little.
Same rule applies for students learning
English.
5
SPEAK...... SLOWLY.....
This is one of the more obvious
tips to make the list, but teachers should
be reminded to speak slow. With vast
number of coffee addicts who rely on
their fix to get through six-straight hours
of teaching, sometimes we can tend to
get a little ahead of ourselves. Always
keep this somewhere close to the fore-
front of your mind, or write it at the top of
your lesson plan in big writing. This is a
great way for remembering to keep the
pace down throughout your class.
6 TEACH ALL FOUR SKILLS
For early learners of English,
it is a good idea to give them a broad
range of activities. This ensures that
they can make an improvement in all ar-
eas. Learning a variety of skills will also
help with other areas of English too. By
practicing reading, the students will get
a very good understanding of grammar
and vocabulary, as they can see the
words correctly used and in context. Lis-
tening is also a good way to learn new
words while helping their speaking. By
listening to a recording, students should
try to copy the manner in which a native
speaker says the words. This will help
significantly later down the track in ac-
cent reduction.
7
REPEAT, REPEAT, REPEAT
When teaching absolute begin-
ners, it is important to repeat all com-
mands in order to give them a chance to
listen to the individual words. By repeat-
ing your commands, the students are
more likely to understand what you are
saying, as they may be able to under-
stand specific words, and then contex-
tually put the action and word together.
For more advanced students at about a
level 0-1, one ideal way of improving the
student’s vocab is to repeat the instruc-
tion using different words. If the student
is unfamiliar with the vocabulary, they
can generally use their brain to connect
the dots while learning through the con-
text.
8
CHILL, RELAX, BE CALM.
DON’T STRESS!
Even though sometimes you may feel
like you’re not helping, or that the work
you are doing is in vain, give it a few
weeks. Things will begin to pan out
nicely after a few weeks as you begin to
find your feet and build a strong rapport
with your students. They will also begin
to understand your teaching methodol-
ogy and begin to pick up on all visual
clues, hand signals, body language, and
everything else that you employ in help-
ing them learn the target language. If
you put in the time with them, they will
always look back on you as being their
first English teacher who really made
the effort to help and assist them.
TEACHING ABSOLUTE BEGINNERS
CAN BE A TOUGH TASK, BUT WITH A
LITTLE KNOW-HOW AND THE RIGHT
ATTITUDE, ANYONE CAN SUCCEED.
The above eight steps should make your
ESL teaching life all that much easier
when your academic manager assigns
you a group of level 0 students.
What You Need to Know
if You Teach Absolute Beginners
Almost without exception, when I tell
people that I teach English as a Sec-
ond Language, they ask, “Oh, what
languages do you speak?”
Though I would like to answer with
polylingual authority, the truth is I am
only fluent in English. “Well, don’t you
need to speak their language before
you can teach them English?” is the
most common retort. The answer, as
most ESL teachers have discovered, is
NO. You do NOT have to speak a sec-
ond language to teach English to those
who know none whatsoever. Teaching
English to absolute beginners, though,
is not a simple task. Where does the
teacher start when he or she has no
common ground with the students
waiting for instruction?
WHAT YOU NEED TO
KNOW ABOUT TPR
(TOTAL PHYSICAL
RESPONSE)
1 NATURAL LANGUAGE
Dr. James A. Asher developed an
answer to that question with his sec-
ond language learning method called
Total Physical Response. He based
this method on the idea that a person
learning any language, particularly a
first language, has a period of time in
which he receives linguistic input with-
out producing linguistic output. In other
words, language learners take in infor-
mation about a language before using
that language for speech. In the early
stages of Total Physical Response in-
struction, the teacher does the talking,
and the students take it in. Later, after
students have become comfortable
and understand what they hear, do
they speak the second language.
2 THE PHYSICAL
CONNECTION
The key component of this language
method, as one might guess from the
title, is the physical response that the
learners use while taking in the linguis-
tic information. Students who mindless-
ly listen to a teacher they cannot under-
stand are more likely to fall asleep than
become fluent, but when they make
appropriate physical responses to the
statements of their teacher, learning
comes easily and quickly.
3 SUCCESS
It may be difficult to believe that
students can have such a positive re-
sponse to language instruction that
needs no books and little preparation
on the part of the teacher, but they do.
I remember the first time I experienced
the Total Physical Response technique
from the other side of the desk. I was
attending a lecture in graduate school
when my teacher walked into the room
on the first day and started speaking
to the class in Hebrew. The class was
confused initially: after all, we were
there for a lecture on syllabus design.
Our professor said several sentences
to the class, pointing to herself (teach-
er) and pointing to us (students). She
showed us the difference between two
students in the front row (male and fe-
male form of the word), and wrote the
corresponding words on the board.
She sat down and stood up. Then she
told us to do the same. Through that
instruction and those movements, we
learned the word for sit and the appro-
priate verb endings for first person sin-
gular, second person plural and sec-
ond person singular. At each point, she
wrote the vocabulary words and verb
conjugations on the board. This exer-
cise was the first ten minutes of class,
and to my own astonishment, to this
day I remember the Hebrew I learned
in those few minutes, fifteen years lat-
er, though I have done no further study
of the language!
4 IT DOESN’T TAKE MUCH
I can personally attest to the suc-
cess of Total Physical Response as
a student and as a teacher, and I be-
lieve that any ESL teacher with a class
of absolute beginners will find TPR
the best method of language instruc-
tion. To use TPR in class, talk to your
students. Use repetition. Write down
words on the board. Above all, get your
students moving.
Start with imperative statements. Sit
down. Stand up. Pick up your pencil.
Then, tell your students narratives. I
am walking to the door. I am picking
up my pencil. You are standing up.
You are picking up your pencil. She is
standing up. He is standing up. Be flex-
ible when you teach with this method.
Look for signs of comprehension in
your students, and do not pressure
them to produce language until they
are ready to volunteer it. Keep remind-
ing yourself that they are learning even
if they are not producing English, and
they will use that language to commu-
nicate when they are ready.
5 MANY BENEFITS
Many benefits come with instruc-
tion through TPR. Students feel less
pressure to produce perfect language.
You can use TPR with a mixed level
class or with students with learning
disabilities. TPR takes little prepara-
tion on your part. Kinesthetic learners,
often the last that teachers think of
when making lesson plans, are in their
learning style glory! TPR is an effec-
tive language learning method for both
children and adults, large and small
classes. Most of all, your students will
have fun moving around the classroom
and engaging in their own learning pro-
cess.
TEACHERS OF ENGLISH AS A SECOND
LANGUAGE WILL FIND, IF THEY
TEACH ANY LENGTH OF TIME, THAT
THEIR STUDENTS COME WITH ALL
LEVELS OF LANGUAGE PROFICIENCY,
AND SOMETIMES THOSE STUDENTS
ALL SHOW UP FOR THE SAME CLASS.
But when you are teaching a class of
beginners or have beginners in your
mixed level class, TPR may be the way
to connect with all of your students. This
method of instruction will have long
term positive effects for your students.
Not only that, their language learn-
ing process may be more in line with
how languages are naturally acquired
by first language speakers. All this will
come together to make your students
more engaged in class and give them
longer lasting language knowledge.
Whether you teach in the east or west,
north or south, or have students from
every corner of the globe, TPR is a way
to bring them together and help them
achieve a common goal!
5
5 Strategies for Teaching
the Beginning ESL Student
I always enjoy teaching beginning ESL
classes. There are a lot of advantages to
teaching beginning ESL students: they
are motivated learners not yet burned
out on language study as students at a
later level often are because it does take
a long time and is oftentimes difficult.
Beginning ESL students generally have
deep respect for teachers and the learn-
ing process, often coming from cultures
where these attitudes are still practiced
and not having yet been exposed much
to American attitudes, which are gener-
ally not so respectful. In addition, a be-
ginning ESL class often has fun class-
room activities such as songs, plays,
and outings rather than dictations and
research writing. And, let’s not forget to
mention, beginning ESL students often
give the teacher flowers at the end of the
term, a practice common in many other
countries.
However, there is still that sinking feel-
ing that sometimes comes in about the
second week of the term when work-
ing with very beginning students, when
the instructor realizes the students re-
ally know little beyond “hello,” “yes,”
and “no.” Where do we even start? Vo-
cabulary? Grammatical structures? Ba-
sic literacy skills? Help! There is help
available. Teaching the beginning ESL
student need not be a difficult and bewil-
dering process if some basic principles
are addressed.
TRY THESE 5
STRATEGIES FOR
TEACHING THE
BEGINNING ESL
STUDENT
1
ADDRESS BASIC
CONVERSATIONAL NEEDS
Traditional language instruction begins
with teaching the alphabet, or numbers,
or conjugating often-used verbs. It is, of
course, difficult to take a needs assess-
ment at this level, but we already know
what beginning students really need is
some basic greetings and farewells and
other language for getting along in their
communities, such as asking for direc-
tions or the costs of items. They don’t re-
ally need to conjugate the verb “to be,”
although this may be taught in the con-
6
text of introductions, for example: “I am
Stacia... he is Gilliam...” The focus, how-
ever, should be on basic conversation,
- grammar should be taught in context
of the conversational skills rather than
as a focus on its own. Students should
work in pairs or small groups much of
the class period so that they can prac-
tice their English skills, preferably with
speakers of languages other than their
own, so that English is the common
language the pair or group must use to
communicate. This is in contrast to the
traditional language instruction that most
Americans have been exposed to and is
still practiced in many parts of the world,
where students sit in rows and wait for
the teacher at the front of the room to
call on them, and they may speak once
or twice a class period, if that.
2 FOCUS ON LANGUAGE
FOR COMMUNICATION
Students don’t need to know how to re-
cite numbers and colors in their second
language. People rarely do that in their
first languages, for that matter. What
students do need to know is how to give
their birthdates and identification num-
bers or ask for a specific color of item in
a store. Continue to focus on communi-
cative needs of students and contextual-
ize language in teaching students short
dialogues for places they will be visiting
like the store, a restaurant, a library, and
so on.
3 LANGUAGE FOR LIFE SKILLS
Identify those language skills stu-
dents will need to learn to survive in the
community. What will they need to say
in situations such as applying for a job,
requesting a repair or refund on an appli-
ance, looking for an apartment, visiting
the doctor’s office, and so forth? When
students have enough English, take a
needs assessment, either oral or written,
to find out which life skills are most im-
portant to them: looking for housing or
talking to a doctor, for example? Have
them practice dialogues in groups or
pairs, and they may even perform short
sketches in front of the class.
4 TRANSITION INTO
ACADEMIC SKILLS
Students will need to learn academic
language in English, of course—how to
read and write it and analyze its gram-
mar. Begin working on these skills while
students continue work on life skills:
have students read short nonfiction or
fiction pieces related to their interests,
answer questions about them, and write
responses. Give short lectures on impor-
tant topics, such as the structure of the
U.S. educational system, and have stu-
dents take brief notes.
5 IDENTIFY SCHOOL
AND CAREER GOALS
Toward the end of the term, begin dis-
cussing with students various school/ca-
reer options. Many students, of course,
will already have identified such goals,
but they may be less sure on how to go
about accomplishing them as our edu-
cational system and its connections to
the workplace can be a complex maze
even to students born in this country.
Begin by identifying several educational
options locally: for example, the com-
munity college and state university and
then go beyond that, as necessary. Also
discuss several possible career paths
that are available from studying at those
institutions, and it is likely at least one
or two students will be interested: there
are always one or two students in my
beginning ESL classes who express in-
terest in the dental assistant and nursing
fields from studying at the local commu-
nity college, for example. Find out what
careers students are already interested
in and discuss where they might get in-
formation on this field: a number of stu-
dents have an interest in pharmacy, for
example, and a nearby private college,
University of the Pacific, has a recog-
nized pharmacy department with several
programs. You might consider having a
school counselor or representative from
a department of student interest come in
to your class to talk about opportunities.
NO ONE SAID TEACHING BEGINNING
ESL WOULD BE EASY.
But with some persistence, focusing on
communication and transitioning to aca-
demic skills, the teacher can take her
class from novices to students ready to
begin the journey toward their academic
lives and careers!
How to Teach English
to Beginners
STUDENTS JUST STARTING THEIR
ENGLISH STUDIES RISK BEING OVER-
WHELMED BY NEW MATERIAL.
Showing them that lessons can be
fun and that they can perform well is
important to get them engaged in and
positive about your classes. Your cur-
riculum should be designed with this
in mind so be sure to dedicate plenty
of time to each section. If students are
doing better than expected, simply
use the free lesson period to review
or better yet, have fun with a cultural
lesson or holiday activity.
HOW TO PROCEED
and advanced levels, you may speak
more rapidly as their grasp on English
increases and they can follow you bet-
ter but it may still be challenging for
them. When you do choral repetition
or drill exercises, be sure to enunci-
ate clearly and be loud enough for the
entire class to hear you. It is often dif-
ficult for people to understand you, if
your mouth is hidden from view which
is odd because your students are sup-
posed to be listening but even so, try
to direct your attention towards your
students, as opposed to the black-
board for instance, when you are talk-
ing to them and hold flashcards at an
appropriate level.
ery language teacher. You can incor-
porate many different games into your
lessons and with lots of miming and
role plays students will probably laugh
at you, in a good way, on more than
one occasion. Taking the focus away
from grammar rules and focusing on
communication will encourage them
to try their best, which is all you can
really ask of them.
STUDENTS JUST BEGINNING THEIR
ENGLISH STUDIES HAVE ABSO-
LUTELY NO IDEA WHAT TO EXPECT
SO IT IS BENEFICIAL TO YOU AND ALL
THEIR LATER ENGLISH TEACHERS TO
HELP THEM ENJOY IT BY ENCOUR-

1 LESSON MATERIAL
Especially with beginners it
is important to go slowly. There is a
steep learning curve at the very be-
ginning of their studies especially if
you are the first to introduce them to
the Latin alphabet. Try to introduce
manageable chunks of information
and do not add in more information
until your students are comfortable
with what they have already covered.
This may mean that they are not able
to understand the purpose of learning
certain things initially but perhaps af-
ter a few lessons on a topic, you can
help put it all together and then they
will be amazed at how much they
have learned. For example, in one
lesson you may teach your students
the words I, you, he/she/it and what
they mean but they cannot make sen-
tences with this vocabulary until you
give them some verbs to work with
which may not be appropriate until a
3 PRACTICE
Choose practice activities that
AGING THEM AND SHOWING THEM
THAT LEARNING ANOTHER LAN-
GUAGE IS NOT AN OVERWHELM-
are simple, easy to understand, and ING TASK.
easy to explain. Using lots of words
that students don’t recognize to ex-
plain how to do a practice activity is
only going to further confuse them. In
many cases a demonstration may be
your best option. As your students im-
prove, you can introduce more com-
plex activities but if an activity ever
takes longer to explain that to com-
plete, it is not worth doing again. Prac-
tice activities should revolve around
students having the opportunity to
speak English so even worksheets
should be used for that purpose. After
a worksheet has been completed, ask
for volunteers to read the questions,
translate the questions, and give the
answers. Try to involve as many stu-
dents as possible and give them con-
tinuous positive feedback.

4
later lesson.
HAVE FUN

2 TEACHER TALKING
In the classroom you will also
have to slow down your talking speed.
Students are never going to under-
stand you if you are talking a mile a
minute. If you assist a teacher who
is not a native speaker and would
like you to speak at a normal speed,
you can speed up slightly but a nor-
mal speed would not be appropriate
for beginners. At the intermediate
Language studies give students
the opportunity to learn in a different
way. English should not be taught the
same way Mathematics or History is
taught. There is no room for lectures
because luckily as the teacher, you
already know how to speak English
while the students really need to prac-
tice more than anything else. Getting
students to communicate with you
and each other in a positive creative
environment should be the goal of ev-

7
 What Do You See? 8 Steps
to Teaching Basic Vocabulary
Picture books are a useful tool for
the ESL teacher, especially when
she is teaching younger students.
Picture books can be a great help in
reading and writing lessons and can
even be the basis of a conversation
class. For vocabulary lessons, simple
books with repeating phrases are
particularly useful. One such book
is Bill Martin’s Brown Bear, Brown
Bear, What do You See? (http://
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brown_
Bear,_Brown_Bear,_What_Do_
You_See%3F) which teaches basic
colors and animal vocabulary.
If you have beginning students who
need a lesson or a review on colors
and animals, here are some activities
you can try. Your kids will have fun,
and they will learn as they play with
Martin’s prose.
HOW TO TEACH
BASIC VOCABULARY
1 GET READY
Start by reading the book to
your class. It is best if you can intro-
duce the book before you plan to do
the rest of the activities so your stu-
dents have some familiarity with it.
2 MAKE MASKS
On the day you plan to start
the activities, read the book to your
class again. After you read, give each
student a picture of one of the animals
in the book, and ask them to color the
animal like the one in the book.
Make sure you have at least one of
each animal represented in your class,
and having multiples of the animals is
okay, too. Have each student cut out
his or her picture and glue it to a paper
plate. Then, have them glue or tape a
tongue depressor to the plate. Each
person now has a mask which shows
one of the animals in the book.
8
3 ROLL CALL
With your students holding
their masks, read the book again
and have each person stand when
his animal is speaking. Have your
students sit down again when the next
animal speaks. After you read the
entire book, say each animal again
and have your students stand for their
animal.
4 REVIEW THE ROLES
On the following day, repeat the
activity. Then have student exchange
masks and read the story again. They
should stand when the animal on their
mask is speaking. If any of your stu-
dents have learned the chant, encour-
age them to say it along with you.
5 LOOK AND SEE
Then rearrange your students
so they are sitting in the same order
as the animals in the book. Starting
at the beginning of the line, ask each
student what he sees. “Sam, what do
you see?” for example. The student
should answer with the name of the
animal next to him. He can say either
the animal’s name (e.g. red bird) or
the entire phrase (I see a red bird
looking at me).
To make sure everyone has prac-
tice with more than one animal, have
your students exchange masks and
repeat the activity. Continue until every
student has had the opportunity to be
each of the animals in the book.
6 REVIEW
On the third day, prepare for
your color and animal lesson by
hanging poster paper in the front
of your room, one page for each of
the animals, and glue a picture of
each animal to a poster.
Distribute the masks again before
reading the book one more time, and
encourage your class to chant along
with you. Many of them will be good
at it by now.
Like the previous two days, have
each person stand when his animal is
speaking.
7 WHAT DO YOU SEE?
Tell your students that now
you are going to play a game. You
will say their name and ask them what
they see. They should respond by
naming an object in the room as well
as its color. For example:
“Hyun, Hyun, what do you see?”
“I see a brown desk looking at
me.”
Give each of your students at least one
turn.
8 A CLASS COLLAGE
Then, make available to your
students some old magazines. Tell
each person that she should find one
picture among the magazines for
each of the animals, and the color of
the object should match the color of
the animal. When a student finds an
appropriate picture, have her come
to the front of the room and point out
the poster where her picture belongs.
She should also tell you the color of her
object. Then have her glue her picture
to the correct poster.
Give your class enough time so every-
one can find one picture for each of the
animals. When you finish, you should
have a collage of magazine pictures for
each color in the book. You should also
have a good read on how well your stu-
dents have learned their colors.
THESE ARE SIMPLE ACTIVITIES THAT
TEACH SIMPLE VOCABULARY, BUT
IF YOU ARE TEACHING YOUNG ESL
STUDENTS, YOUR CLASS WILL LOVE
IT.
Once your students know their colors
and animals, there are many follow up
activities you can do to reinforce their
new vocabulary.
How To Teach English Using
Games: The Original Hangman
THIS ALL-TIME FAVORITE IS FOR
COMPLETE BEGINNERS OR ELE-
MENTARY STUDENTS. IT IS USEFUL
FOR SPELLING, DICTIONARY WORK,
STUDENT INTERACTION AND
EMPOWERMENT, FAMILIARIZA-
TION WITH PREFIXES AND SUF-
FIXES, TEACHING NUMBERS AND
LETTERS TOGETHER AND SIMPLE
EDUCATIONAL FUN. IT IS DESIGNED
SIMPLY TO REMIND US OF THE
TEACHING APPLICATIONS OF THIS
WORD GAME IN ITS BASIC FORM
WITHOUT THE FRILLS.
This game has a very simple format,
but can be built upon to practice not
only simple vocabulary, but also the
use of vowels and consonants in word
creation. Common letters can be elu-
cidated as well as many language
structures such as prefixes and typi-
cal word endings.
HOW TO PROCEED
1 INTRODUCE THE RULES
Introduce the rules by initially
demonstrating a word on the board
without the gallows or the noose. Per-
sonalizing the word adds reality and
therefore it is a good idea to choose
the name of one of the students. They
will probably be surprised to find their
name contains some of the ‘English
vowels’ i.e. A,E,I,O,U. Make a line for
each letter of the word and count out
the number of letters and write the ap-
propriate number underneath. Draw
their attention to the name e.g.. “It
is a five letter word. It has 2 vowels.
The first letter of the word is ...” Get
your students to check the spelling of
their own names and their partners to
their left and right and delight in their
discovery of this striking similarity with
the English Language.
2 DEMONSTRATE
This is a group game for every-
one. Begin with a demonstration on
the board so that students can clearly
visualize how to play. Then a simple
description. The students have to
guess your mystery word. “This word WITH INSTRUCTIONS. THE GAME
has a certain number of letters” and AND ITS RULES CAN BE EXPLAINED
they have to elicit them one by one. VERBALLY AND VISUALLY.
The students can sit in a horseshoe
Ensure the rules are understood by configuration using seats only as this
concept checking. As they call out a activity does not require pens, papers
letter of the alphabet the teacher will or desks. This will also enable moving
cross it out from A-Z written on the people around easily if smaller groups
board for reference and put that letter are utilized later in the game.
in the mystery word, or draw a body
feature on the Hangman as appropri- It may be used as a warmer/closer or
ate. It is important to show visually that filler depending on the time available.
for each letter missed, one body part
is drawn on the Hangman. The object
of the game is to guess the word be-
fore being hanged. The students nor-
mally have 9 attempts (Head, neck,
body, arms, legs and feet), but option-
al features can be added if the word
is too difficult to guess (eyes, ears,
nose, mouth, hair).
3 PRACTICE
Practice vocabulary already in-
troduced, if appropriate e.g. popular
hobbies. As the game focuses largely
on letters and spelling practice, also
incorporate pronunciation of the tar-
geted words and by numbering the
letters teach the practical usage of
cardinal and ordinal counting. Once
the unknown word has been ascer-
tained, speaking should be encour-
aged to use the vocabulary in context
and thus add to the language content.
4
PLAY HANGMAN!
Initially the game may be played
as a group activity and dictionaries
are permitted as this encourages fu-
ture usage, when relevant. The stu-
dents can guess the full word at any
time, but you should impose a pen-
alty if wrong. This is to prevent ran-
dom and careless guesses and keep
control of the students and the game.
To encourage student empowerment
the person who correctly guesses the
word can then come to the board and
chose a secret word himself/herself
for the next game.
DO NOT DISTRIBUTE ANY HANDOUTS
9
 How to Teach Descriptions
Generally when introducing descrip-
tions for the first time, textbooks and
instructors focus primarily on describ-
ing people. The simplest way to teach
descriptions is to use the structures
“He/She is ~.” and “He/She has ~.”
With these two simple structures, you
can introduce and practice your new
vocabulary quite extensively. Since
learning how to describe someone
is a lesson for beginners, more com-
plex sentence structures such as “The
tall girl with curly brown hair is in my
class.” should not be used at this time.
HOW TO PROCEED
1
WARM UP
Use a warm up activity to re-
view the basic sentence structures
you plan to use in this lesson. You can
ask for volunteers to answer ques-
tions which require them to use these
particular structures. Another idea is
to conduct a short activity. Have the
first student in each column of desks
stand up, and explain that only these
students can volunteer to answer your
question. The first student to volunteer
and answer the question correctly can
sit down and the person behind him
must stand. This becomes a race to
see what column of students can fin-
ish answering questions first. In order
to play this game, the columns should
be even but you can adapt it to work
in most classes.
2 INTRODUCE
BASIC VOCABULARY
Using flashcards or drawings, intro-
duce a new set of vocabulary. Adjec-
tives like tall, short, long, short (write
it on the board twice because these
words are usually practiced in pairs),
straight, curly, thin, fat, old, and young
would be a good place to start. Drill
these using your flashcards or draw-
ings.
3 PRACTICE
Have students complete some
matching or fill in the blank exercis-
es. The images used on these work-
sheets should clearly demonstrate
what you are trying to convey to your
students and should even match the
images on the flashcards if possible.
10
This will help reinforce the flashcard eliminated and the first student to cor-
image, word, and meaning. rectly guess his partner’s chosen im-
age wins. It may even be possible to
4 INTRODUCE ADDITIONAL
VOCABULARY
play this game multiple times within a
single class period.
When describing people, there is
some additional vocabulary that
should be introduced. Words such as
7 REVIEW
You can ask students compre-
freckles, glasses, a mustache, and a hension questions to review the new
beard, for instance, may be appropri- vocabulary words at the end of the
ate however your textbook will help lesson or ask for sentences that de-
determine which words should be scribe some of the images you used
used in this lesson. Use choral repeti- earlier in class. Whatever activity you
tion to practice pronunciation. Check use can be used as the warm up for
the following lesson too.
comprehension by asking questions
such as “Who has glasses?” and
have volunteers answer using people
LESSONS ON DESCRIPTIONS ARE
at your school, famous people, or car-
IMPORTANT BECAUSE MOST OF
toon characters.
THE VOCABULARY CAN BE USED
TO DESCRIBE MORE THAN JUST
5 PRACTICE
A short practice activity that
PEOPLE AND THUS IS USEFUL IN
MANY FUTURE LESSONS AS WELL.
Since this vocabulary will resurface
combines both sets of vocabulary
during the course of their studies, it
would be appropriate at this point in
will be important to review it frequent-
the lesson especially if only a few
ly. If students enjoyed a particular ac-
words were introduced in the second
tivity more than others, make a note
set. You could show students images
of it and reuse that activity when it
and ask for volunteers to say one sen-
comes time for a review.
tence about the person in the picture
or have a worksheet that required stu-
dents to write a few sentences about
some images. Matching exercises
may also be appropriate and be sure
to check the answers aloud as a class
for further speaking practice before
continuing to the production activity.
6 PRODUCE
Students should now be able to
accurately describe someone so give
them the opportunity to produce ma-
terial of their own. You can ask stu-
dents to write a description of them-
selves or a partner and have students
volunteer to read their descriptions
aloud near the end of the lesson.
You could also have students work
in pairs and play a version of Guess
Who? Obviously having enough of
these games for your entire class is
not feasible but you can adapt it for
use in the classroom. Simply make up
a worksheet with twenty to twenty-five
images. Tell students to choose one
image and then take turns answering
yes/no questions based on the image
they have chosen. Students can then
put Xs next to images that have been
How to Teach Using Games
A WIDE VARIETY OF GAMES CAN BE
USED WHEN TEACHING ENGLISH.
The key is to ensure that everyone
fully participates and has enough
practice with the lesson material to
play. If students are not confident,
they will struggle and not get the most
out of the activity.
HOW TO USE GAMES
1 WHOLE CLASS GAMES
Some games such as interview
activities, bingo, jeopardy, and board
games can be played by the entire
class.
• An interview activity to practice
the “Where are you from?” and
“I’m from ~.” structures might
start by handing out slips of paper
with eight to ten different country
names. Students can then be giv-
en a worksheet with all the coun-
try names written on the left and
told that their goal is to get a stu-
dent signature for each country
by mingling with their classmates
and asking the target question.
When asked the target question,
a student should respond based
on the slip of paper he received.
• Bingo can be played with num-
bers, letters, vocabulary words, or
many other topics you may want
to practice.
• Jeopardy is more of a review
activity because it focuses on
listening and does not give stu-
dents lots of speaking practice.
The easiest thing to do is have
students make groups of four to
five, write categories and stars for
each answer on the board, and
explain that groups will get three
points for a correct answer after
the first clue, two points after the
second clue, and only one point
after the last clue. You will need
five or six categories and perhaps
five answers per category. If you
would like to focus on a particular
tense, simply use that tense for
at least one clue per answer. You
can choose the first category but
after that, the group who provides
the correct answer first should
choose the category. This activ-
ity could take a whole forty-five
minute lesson and the group with
the most points at the end of class
wins.
• Board games are often best
played in small groups but if intro-
ducing a very challenging game,
it may be a good idea to play as
a class first. A group of students
can be represented by a game
piece and students can work to-
gether to answer questions. In the
class following this, students can
play the game in groups for fur-
ther practice.
2
GAMES IN SMALL GROUPS
There are also lots of games
that can be played in groups of about
four students.
• Board games where students
move pieces and answer ques-
tions or form sentences based on
images make for good practice
activities. For practicing the “If ~,
then ~.” structure a Chutes and
Ladders layout may be fun for
students.
• Card games such as Go Fish,
Memory, and many more can be
adapted for classroom use. When
you are teaching comparatives,
card games can be an invaluable
tool. You can also use simple card
games to test comprehension by
making up decks of cards with let-
ters for example. Have students
spread all the cards face up on
their desks, you then say a let-
ter aloud, and the first student
to slap the correct card gets to
keep it. Repeat until all the cards
are gone and the student with
the most cards at the end of the
game wins. To make this more
challenging, you can tell students
that if they slap the wrong card,
they have to take one card out of
their pile.
3
PAIWORK GAMES
There are many of pair activities
students can do to practice English
but very few of them take the form of
a game.
• The best and most versatile one
by far is Battleship. This will take
a lesson to explain and practice
but once your students are fa-
miliar with it, can be played as
a twenty to thirty minute activity.
Battleship is best used to practice
tenses. The worksheet consists
of two identical seven by seven
grids, one above the other. The
first box in the upper left is kept
blank, the first row is filled in with
phrases such as “play soccer”
and “study English”, and the first
column is filled in with words such
as “I, You, He, We, They, The stu-
dents.” Students should secretly
draw their “boats” on the grid. Typ-
ically one boat should have five
squares, one boat should have
four squares, two boats should
have three squares, and one boat
should have two squares. Boats
can only be drawn vertically or
horizontally. On the board prac-
tice the structure that students will
use for the activity for example “I
played soccer. You studied Eng-
lish.” until every row and column
has been practiced and then in-
struct students to say “Hit”, “Miss”,
or “You sank my ship!” when ap-
propriate just like in the original
game. Students can usually play
two or three times before moving
on to another activity.
AGAIN, THERE ARE LOTS OF DIF-
FERENT GAMES OUT THERE THAT
CAN BE USED IN THE CLASSROOM.
BE CREATIVE AND HAVE FUN!
ENSURING YOUR STUDENTS HAVE
THE NECESSARY INSTRUCTIONS
AND PRACTICE BEFORE STARTING
ANY ACTIVITY WILL MAKE IT MORE
ENJOYABLE AND BENEFICIAL FOR
YOUR STUDENTS.
11
 How To Use Printable Flashcards
For Teaching ESL
Flashcards can be an excellent learn-
ing and teaching tool especially when
introducing new vocabulary or drilling
familiar words. Besides being used by
the teacher, they can also be used in
a variety of activities and even posted
around the classroom for students to
reference.
HOW TO PROCEED
• A variation on Snap – Cards can
have words, pictures, or numbers
printed on one or both sides. Stu-
dents play in groups of three to
five. First have students spread
the cards out (face up) on the desk
in the middle of each group. Then
simply say one vocabulary word
aloud at a time. Students, upon
hearing the word, must repeat it
and slap the corresponding card.
by shuffling the cards and laying
them out (face down) in a square
or rectangular grid. Students take
turns flipping over two cards try-
ing to find a matching pair. If a
matching pair is found, the stu-
dent whose turn it is gets to keep
both cards and the student with
the most cards at the end of the
game wins the game.

1 INTRODUCING
NEW VOCABULARY
The words on these flashcards should
be in a simple font, large enough for
students at the back of the classroom
to see, and printed in an easy to read
color. Generally the reverse side of
the card would have an image or a
translation. When introducing new vo-
cabulary hold the flashcards up high
enough for everyone to see and do
some choral repetition with students
one word at a time revealing the re-
verse before moving on to the next
word. It is easiest when holding a set
of flashcards to remove the front card
and move it to the back as opposed
to moving them back to front. Espe-
cially with beginners, only a handful of
words should be introduced at a time.
The student who slaps the cor-
rect card first gets to keep it and
the student with the most cards in
each group wins the round.
• Go fish – Cards can have print-
ing on only one side and must be
opaque. The deck must have two
or four of each card depending
on how many vocabulary words
you would like to use. Around 50
cards in a deck would be good.
Students play in groups of three
to five. First have students shuf-
fle the deck and deal five cards
(face down) per student. Put the
remaining cards in a pile (face
down) in the middle of the desk.
Students take turns asking other
members of the group for cards
trying to gather the necessary two
or four cards of a particular word.
You can make the asking and
4 REVIEW
Before tests and quizzes, chal-
lenge your students with lots of flash-
cards by combining all the sets they
need to review. It may be a bit over-
whelming but if they have truly been
building upon their knowledge dur-
ing the course of their lessons, they
should perform well. Difficulties with
large sets of flashcards or vocabulary
would suggest that they require more
practice when new vocabulary is intro-
duced and more consistent practice of
words they have already learned.
THERE ARE MANY GAMES, WHICH
YOUR STUDENTS ARE SURE TO
ENJOY, THAT MAKE USE OF FLASH-
CARDS. AS LONG AS FLASHCARDS
ARE CLEAR AND SIMPLE, THEY CAN
BE INVALUABLE IN YOUR TEACHING.

2 DRILLING VOCABULARY
After introducing new vocabu-
lary, it is a good idea to review it of-
ten. At first, pronounce each word,
have students repeat each word as a
class, and prompt them for the trans-
lation. This will be slower in the begin-
ning however as they become more
familiar with the words, there will be
no need for you to demonstrate pro-
nunciation or prompt them. When
the students get to this stage with a
set of vocabulary, challenge them by
flipping through the words at a faster
pace. Translations are no longer nec-
essary.
answering dialogue more or less
complicated depending on your
students. The simplest method
is to have the student whose turn
it is look directly at another stu-
dent and simply say the word he
is looking for. The student being
asked for a card can then either
respond by saying the word and
handing the card over or saying
“Go Fish” in which case the stu-
dent whose turn it is must draw a
card from the center pile.
• Memory – Cards can have print-
ing on only one side and must be
opaque. The deck must have two
of each card or perhaps have an

3 PRACTICE
Small sets of flashcards can be
image and a word for each vo-
cabulary word. Students play in
smaller groups usually no more
used in a variety of fun activities. Here than four. Students should start
are some easy ones.

12
How to Teach Numbers
NUMBERS ARE TYPICALLY TAUGHT
EARLY ON IN ESL COURSES.
This means that students generally
have very limited English abilities so it
is best to proceed slowly, taking sev-
eral classes if necessary to cover the
material. The first time numbers are
introduced, limit them to numbers one
4 CHECK
With beginners, it is important
to check comprehension frequently.
Students may be confused or hesitant
due to lack of understanding but will
often be unwilling or unable to ask for
help. A group activity will get your stu-
dents on their feet. One activity is to
is the student with the most cards at
the end of the game. If your students
are struggling with certain numbers,
feel free to also write the numeral on
the board but be sure to say it first.
You can use this same deck later on
to practice reading and the difference
between -teens and multiples of ten.

through ten and then build up to one
hundred. Larger numbers can be in-
troduced at another time.
HOW TO PROCEED
make groups with the same number
of people as you call out. For exam-
ple if you say “Four” students should
make groups of four and when you
call out the next number they should
run around trying to get into appro-
7
PRODUCE
Since you recently used bingo
in your warm up, students should be
familiar with the game. Ask them to
fill out new grids with numbers zero

1 WARM UP
Your students are, at this stage,
probably beginners so try to review
material that was covered in the pre-
vious lesson and keep lessons enjoy-
able so that students will not develop
an aversion to your classes. Lessons
prior to this may include letters so you
can play letter bingo. Each student
should have a five by five grid. Have
them fill in the grid with letters and
then say letters at random until one or
more students have gotten bingo.
priately sized groups. Another activ-
ity is to split the class into two to four
teams. Each group should determine
in what order students take turns and
be given a portion of the board to write
on. When you say a word aloud, the
student whose turn it is should run to
the board and write the numeral. If
your students do very well, tell them
they have to spell out the word and
maybe later on, as a review activity,
students have to spell out the word of
the number that comes after the one
you say aloud. At the end of the game,
the group with the most points wins.
through one hundred and play mul-
tiple times. You can also play another
group activity where students stand
in a circle and take turns saying num-
bers in order from zero to one hun-
dred. Perhaps students say a number
and then the name of the classmate
who will say the next one or some oth-
er variation to keep things interesting.
When they have mastered that, you
can ask them to skip numbers with
threes and sevens, including thirteen
and seventy for example, to make it
more challenging.

2 INTRODUCE NUMBERS
Use flashcards to introduce
numbers one through ten. Flashcards
should have both the numeral and the
word for each number. This will proba-
bly also include introducing some new
vocabulary so choose words that will
be used often in your classroom and
words where the plural form is made
by simply adding -s. Words like teach-
er, student, book, pencil, and desk
would all be appropriate. Use choral
repetition for pronunciation practice
and then drill using the flashcards.
5 INTRODUCE
MORE NUMBERS
8 REVIEW
Worksheets may be an appropri-
ate review activity but any activity you
played during your numbers classes,
When your students are confident us-
ing numbers one through ten, intro- could be conducted again as a review.
duce numbers zero to one hundred.
Focus primarily on the numerals and
pronunciation. It is a lot of new ma-
NUMBERS ARE USED OFTEN DURING
terial to take in but there is a pattern
ESL COURSES. ESPECIALLY BEFORE
so stressing one through ten as well
LESSONS ON TIME OR SOMETHING
as multiples of ten will be really im-
SIMILAR, A REVIEW IS GOING TO
portant. The difficult part for most stu-
BE NECESSARY. STUDENTS WILL
dents will be eleven to nineteen and
MOST LIKELY CONTINUE TO BE
confusing numbers like thirteen with
CONFUSED BY THE PRONUNCIA-
TION OF CERTAIN NUMBERS SO

3
PRACTICE NUMBERS
If your students are not famil-
iar with the Latin alphabet, they have
probably been using worksheets to
practice forming letters of the alpha-
thirty. Keeping this in mind, practice
difficult areas more often than others.
SPECIAL SHORT CHALLENGE ACTIV-
ITIES MAY BE A NICE BREAK FROM
OTHER TOPICS AS THEY ADVANCE
6 PRACTICE
Make decks of cards for num-
THROUGH THEIR ENGLISH STUDIES.

bet. You can use a similar worksheet
to help them practice writing out num-
bers like one, two, three, etc. This is
a good opportunity for them to prac-
tice letter and word spacing. If your
students are familiar with the Latin
alphabet, matching or fill in the blank
exercises may be more appropriate.
bers zero to one hundred with nu-
merals on one side and words on the
other. For the purposes of this activity
have students spread out the cards
numeral side up. Students should
play in groups of three to six. When
you call out a number, the first stu-
dent to say and smack the appropri-
ate card gets to keep it. The winner

13
 How to Teach Ordinal Numbers
ONCE STUDENTS HAVE LEARNED
CARDINAL NUMBERS, YOU WILL
HAVE TO INTRODUCE ORDINAL
NUMBERS AS WELL.
This lesson should not directly follow
the one on cardinal numbers because
students need a lot of practice with
those before being introduced to this
topic however they are both beginner
lessons and as such will most likely
fall within the same school year. If stu-
dents have had enough practice with
cardinal numbers, this lesson should
be fun and easy. You can use some
of the same teaching materials and
games too!
HOW TO PROCEED
students understand the meaning of
these words, you can use number
flashcards and choral repetition for
pronunciation practice.
3 PRACTICE
Using the same number cards
as in the warm up activity, students
can play games to practice these
new words. Memory would be great
for pronunciation practice as long as
every student says the correct ordinal
number aloud when he turns over a
card. If students cannot be encour-
aged to actually say the words aloud,
you may as well move on to another
activity. You can use BusyTeacher’s
ordinal numbers worksheets to test
comprehension by asking students
confuse words such as thirteenth and
thirtieth so these may require a round
of Bingo of their own for extra prac-
tice.
ORDINAL NUMBERS SHOULD NOT
PRESENT TOO MUCH OF A CHAL-
LENGE FOR STUDENTS.
Try to give students lots of fun practice
activities in this lesson. There are not
many occasions where ordinal num-
bers will come up in ESL classes ex-
cept when talking about directions, for
example “Turn left at the third corner.”
and other instructions - “First preheat
the oven.” where students will get lots
of extra practice.

1 WARM UP
Use the warm up activity to get
students thinking about cardinal num-
bers especially if it has been a long
time since you last practiced them.
You can do this by using decks of
number cards to play games like
Memory or Go Fish in small groups
or by playing a game such as Bingo
as a class. To review more vocabu-
lary, you can make up a story as a
class instead. You can start by saying
“I went to the store and bought one
cat.” for instance, have the next stu-
dent repeat your sentence and then
add “and two ~.” and continue on until
everyone has contributed. If you have
a very large class, you may just want
students to say a number and an item
instead of repeating everything each
time but this will give them less num-
ber practice.
questions based on images or videos
of races or lines. Students can also
be prompted to write sentences about
themselves such as “I am the first
child in my family.”
4 PRODUCE
To give students more speaking
practice, you can provide them with a
model dialogue or an interview activ-
ity. The model dialogue might focus
on an image on the board where stu-
dents take turns asking the position
of various things and responding to
questions. An interview activity could
include questions such as “What’s
the first thing you do in the morning?”
or “What’s the first thing you do af-
ter school?” Your students’ range of
vocabulary will help determine what
questions are appropriate. Try to in-
clude a variety of previously studied
material as well as different ordinal

2 INTRODUCE
ORDINAL NUMBERS
numbers even though first is probably
the most commonly used.

Since ordinal numbers have nothing

to do with amount but rather with po-
sition, do not start off by using num-
bers but instead use images of other
vocabulary words to simulate a race
on the board. You can talk with your
students about the positions of each
item by saying for example “The dog
is first and the cat is second.” Begin
with just a few words or images on
the board and work your way up to
give students practice using the first
ten ordinal numbers. Introduce the
word ‘last’ as well since this is a po-
sition related vocabulary word. Once
5 CHALLENGE
If your students are doing well,
you can talk about the pattern of form-
ing ordinal numbers. Make sure that
students know that except for elev-
enth, twelfth, and thirteenth, numbers
ending with one, two, or three are ir-
regular and should be said first, sec-
ond, and third respectively. You should
also look at all multiples of ten from
twentieth through ninetieth because
these are pronounced slightly differ-
ently from other ordinal numbers. As
with cardinal numbers students may

14
As Easy as OneTwoThree:
10 Ways to Practice Numbers
Using numbers in a foreign language is dif-
ficult for most second language speakers.
TRY THESE 10 WAYS TO
PRACTICE NUMBERS IN
YOUR ESL CLASSROOM
1 GO FISH
“Do you have any fours?” You may
hear this question frequently if you allow
your students to play Go Fish as part of
their number practice. To make the game
more challenging and give your students
more numbers practice, use two decks of
cards for around eight students for one
game. Require that a player must have
all eight matching cards before he can
claim them for his own. Your students
will laugh at how confusing the game can
become with sets of cards passing back
and forth between all the players!
2 TWENTY-FOUR
A deck of cards can entertain your
students with more than Go Fish. Play
the game Twenty-Four in groups be-
tween two and four players. Each round
of a four-player game, each player lays
one card down. (Two players lay two
cards each. Three players rotate who
lays down the extra card.) Each card has
the number value on the card, with aces
counting as one and face cards counting
as ten. The players race to make a math-
ematical equation using the four num-
bers so the answer is twenty-four. When
someone has an answer, he taps the
table and shares it with his opponents.
3 BOLOGNA
Another card game that gives your
students a chance to practice numbers
in English is Bologna. To play, groups of
four to six students divide a deck of cards
between them. Starting with the first per-
son, he places one or more cards into the
center of the table and announces the
quantity of two’s that he is placing there,
face down. The second player must an-
nounce how many three’s she is putting
in the center of the table, face down. Play
continues around the circle with each
player announcing a quantity of cards
ordered from three to ace and then start-
ing back at two. In reality, players may
or may not lay down the quantity or de-
nomination of cards they announce. The
key to the game is bluffing and knowing
when others are doing the same. At any
point during play, any player may call
“Bologna!” if she thinks or knows another
student is lying. If the player was lying
and did not put down the cards she an-
nounced, she must take all the cards in
the center. If that player was telling the
truth, the player who called bologna must
take the entire pile. Play continues until
someone is out of cards and wins the
game.
4 MAP IT
Review with your students all the
personal information that contains num-
bers. Address, phone number, birthday
and even email address often contain
numbers. Have students work in groups
of four or five to create a map of where
their classmates live. Give your students
some time to interact and collect the
addresses of each of their classmates.
Then, have groups of students make a
map of the town and nearby area to show
where each person lives.
5 MY TIMELINE
To challenge your students with lon-
ger numbers, have them create a time-
line of the significant events of their lives.
If you can, get a long roll of paper and en-
courage students to include photographs
or illustrations of their significant events.
To make sure your class is practicing
numbers in English, have them write out
the years rather than using numerals on
their timelines.
6 WEATHER
Whether you realize it or not, track-
ing the weather is a great way for ESL
students to use numbers. Take some
time each day to access basic weather
information – temperature, dew point,
humidity and barometric pressure – and
talk about it at the start of the school day.
You may want your students to keep a
record of the weather patterns.
7 CLASSROOM MARKETPLACE
With a classroom market place,
your students can practice buying, sell-
ing and bargaining with numbers in Eng-
lish. Start by having each person imag-
ine a product they might want to sell at
the classroom marketplace. It is easier
to make the items hypothetical, but you
may choose to have your students create
actual items from art supplies you have
in the classroom. Then, make copies of
special classroom dollars and give each
student ten dollars to spend in the mar-
ket. Let your students haggle (explain
this concept before opening the market
and do not allow anyone to purchase
anything without haggling) and then see
what everyone ends up by the end of the
activity.
8 MENTAL MATH
New math is not as new as it used
to be, but challenging your students to do
mental math problems will get them using
numbers in English. Give your students a
chance to do some simple mental math
problems, and then let the real challenge
begin. Using a spelling bee format, ask
your students to do increasingly difficult
mathematical equations without using
paper. If a student gets one wrong, he
sits down. The last one standing is the
Mental Math champion!
9 CLASS SURVEYS
Class surveys are another way your
ESL students can practice using num-
bers in English. As a class, make a list
of demographic or statistical categories
that might apply to your students. For ex-
ample, how many students have dogs,
how many have more than one sibling,
how many have grandparents still living,
etc. Brainstorm a large list, and then ask
each student to choose five questions
he will ask each of his classmates. Give
your students time to interview one an-
other, and then have each person write a
sentence for each of his categories. For
each question, the student must write a
statement using words and not numerals
to represent the answers.
10 NUMBERS IN PROVERBS
Many proverbs and idioms
contain numbers. Alex Case compiled
this list, which you can use in your ESL
class. Challenge students to guess which
number completes each phrase and then
match that phrase to the correct definition.
THOUGH YOUR STUDENTS MAY NOT
ENJOY MATH CLASS, THESE ACTIVI-
TIES WILL BE A FUN WAY TO REVIEW
NUMBERS IN YOUR ESL CLASS.
15
 How to Teach Shapes
STUDENTS MAY NOT OFTEN USE
SHAPES IN THEIR EVERYDAY CON-
VERSATION OR ENGLISH LESSONS
as they practice the words. This will ate the shape you call out. For ex-
help reinforce what the new words ample, if you say “Triangle.” students
mean. should try to organize themselves into
a triangle. It may be a bit of a chal-

BUT IT IS STILL WORTH TEACHING
YOUR STUDENTS CERTAIN BASIC
SHAPES ESPECIALLY IF YOU ARE
GOING TO TELL THEM TO “CIRCLE
THE CORRECT ANSWER.” ON THEIR
WORKSHEETS OR EXAMS.
Knowing basic shapes can also be
useful when students try to explain
objects that they do not know the
word for because if they can describe
something accurately enough, you
will be able to give them the correct
vocabulary word. This article provides
some ideas and activities on teaching
shapes to preschool and kindergarten
kids and teenagers.
HOW TO PROCEED
3
PRACTICE SHAPES
After practicing the vocabulary
as a class, have students practice
writing the words by labeling images
on a worksheet or making sentences
for each image. For example, if there
is a picture of a circular clock, stu-
dents can write “It’s a circle.” while
if there is an image of a photograph,
students can write “It’s a rectangle.”
You can also continue practicing as
a class by naming familiar objects or
objects in the classroom and having
students tell you what shape they are.
Students should be encouraged to
use full sentences when responding
to these questions.
lenge but depending on the class,
may be quite enjoyable as well. It is
good to conduct activities, such as
this one, which require cooperation
among your students.
SHAPES MAY NOT BE THE MOST
IMPORTANT SECTION OF MATERIAL
THAT STUDENTS STUDY AND THIS
VOCABULARY IS UNLIKELY TO COME
UP REPEATEDLY IN THE COURSE
BUT TEACHING BASIC SHAPES IS
STILL NECESSARY. LATER ON WHEN
STUDENTS ARE TAUGHT THE ADJEC-
TIVE FORM OF THESE WORDS, SUCH
AS CIRCULAR AND TRIANGULAR,

1 WARM UP
Shapes are another topic for
very beginners so it is worth spending
time reviewing the previous lesson. If
you choose to do the production activ-
ity suggested in this lesson, you may
want to devote some time to reviewing
numbers, description words and body
parts as well. You can simply ask stu-
dents to name the body part or num-
ber you are pointing to as a class or
by volunteering. You can also review
all this vocabulary using flashcards or
by eliciting vocabulary from your stu-
dents to see what they can remem-
ber. Warm up activities for beginning
students may take up to ten minutes
of your class time depending on how
much material you feel the need to in-
clude. When it comes to vocabulary,
repetition is the key.
4 PRODUCE
At this stage in the lesson stu-
AT LEAST THEY WILL BE BUILD-
ING UPON PREVIOUSLY LEARNED
MATERIAL.
dents should be able to produce their
own material. You could have them
write as many objects as they can
think of for each shape, for instance.
You could also conduct an activity
which combines students’ knowledge
of shapes, numbers, descriptions and
body parts. Assuming you have cov-
ered all of these topics, you can do
this activity called Monsters. Have
students work in pairs sitting back
to back. First give students time to
draw a monster on the top half of
their worksheets. Student A will then
describe his monster to his partner
while Student B listens to the descrip-
tion and draws a monster based on
the description he is given. Students
will say sentences such as “He/She/
It has one small nose. It’s a circle.”

2 INTRODUCE SHAPES
Drawings on the board or flash-
cards will be the easiest way to intro-
duce shapes. You may choose to only
teach square, rectangle, circle, and
triangle but feel free to include other
vocabulary such as star and diamond
if appropriate. Use choral repetition
When Student A is finished describing
his monster, students should switch
roles. When both partners have de-
scribed and drawn a monster, have
students compare their drawings. It is
amusing to see how different they are
even if students were listening care-
fully.

for pronunciation practice and drill by
pointing to the drawings on the board
or using flashcards. If you are only
using basic shapes and working with
young learners, have them make the
shapes using specific hand gestures
5
REVIEW
If possible, it may be fun to get
the class moving and working togeth-
er. In the last minutes of class have
students position themselves to cre-

16
How to Teach Weather
TEACHING WEATHER VOCABU-
LARY EARLY ON IN THE COURSE IS
A GOOD IDEA BECAUSE IT IS SOME-
THING THAT STUDENTS CAN PRAC-
TICE REGULARLY.
During your daily warm ups, if you de-
cide to ask students questions, you
can always ask about the weather
and the vocabulary comes in handy
during other activities too.
TEACHING WEATHER:
STEP BY STEP GUIDE
the middle can read his card and the
students with the same card should
remain seated while the other stu-
dents have to change seats. This way,
the word being said should always
change and no one will have to sit
still for long. When making these mini
weather flashcards, it is important to
use the same images that you used
on the large flashcards if possible be-
cause consistency will help your stu-
dents memorize the words and asso-
ciate them with particular images.
7 REVIEW
For a review activity, try to in-
clude another recent topic, for in-
stance, days of the week into your
weather lesson plan. You can do this
easily by creating an activity about
weather forecasts. Students can work
in pairs where each student has a
weekly weather forecast with some
blanks. Students have to talk to their
partners about the weather on dif-
ferent days to successfully complete
their weekly forecast. Students should

1 WARM UP
Start off with your usual warm up
and try to get students talking about
seasons. Ask students what season
they like best and see if anyone can
explain why. This could elicit much of
the vocabulary you plan to practice
during the lesson so if certain vocabu-
lary words come up, write them on the
board. You can also talk about differ-
ent activities students like to do during
particular seasons and why some of
them, such as snowboarding, cannot
be done year round.
4 INTRODUCE
Next ask students “How’s the
weather?” which automatically intro-
duces the structure for the question
of this lesson. When students reply
“Sunny!” you can say “That’s right! It’s
sunny.” thus modeling the sentence
structure you want them to practice.
Use the flashcards to have students
practice the model sentence using dif-
ferent words. If you want students to
say “It’s snowing.” the snow flashcard
should say snowing on it. You want
to give students as much practice
as possible with the form of the word
take turns asking and answering
questions. The structure of the ques-
tion for this activity would be “How’s
the weather on Monday?” while the
sentence structure could be “It’s sun-
ny.” or “On Monday, it’s sunny.”
WEATHER IS DEFINITELY A TOPIC
THAT ESL STUDENTS CAN TALK
ABOUT OFTEN BECAUSE IT AFFECTS
THEM ON A DAILY BASIS.
Give them plenty of opportunities
to use weather related vocabulary
throughout the course to keep these

2 INTRODUCE they will need for the lesson. words fresh in their minds.

Through your warm up activ-

ity, you may have been able to build
a vocabulary list on the board which
is good because it shows that some
students are familiar with these words
and will make the introduction easier.
If you are unable to elicit any weather
related vocabulary, you will have to
spend more time on your introduction
and practice sections. Once you have
completed the warm up, introduce
your weather related vocabulary us-
ing weather flashcards. Some basic
words you may want to include are
sunny, cloudy, raining, snowing, hot
and cold. Drill these new words using
choral repetition first and then call on
students to say them individually.
5 PRACTICE
Students can use the same
cards they had earlier or maybe switch
with a partner for the next activity. Ask
students to walk around the room ask-
ing “How’s the weather?” and answer-
ing the question based on the card
they have. Students should try to find
someone to say each weather word
listed on the worksheet and get sig-
natures from the students they talk to.
6 PRODUCE
Now you are going to want stu-
dents to produce some material on
their own. You can have short writing
activities where students talk about

3 PRACTICE
After students have had some
practice pronouncing these words,
conduct a short activity to give them
some further practice. You can do this
by giving each student a small version
of one of the flashcards. Have stu-
dents arrange their chairs in a circle
and remove one chair. The student in
their favorite and least favorite weath-
er. You can also ask them to say what
they like to do when it’s sunny, cloudy,
or raining for instance. This will give
students a bit of writing practice and
at the end of the activity you can have
volunteers read their responses to the
class for more speaking practice.

17
 New Ideas for Teaching
the Weather
ON OCTOBER 1, 1890, THE U.S.
CONGRESS CREATED THE WEATHER
BUREAU. IN 1970, ITS NAME WAS
CHANGED TO THE NATIONAL
WEATHER SERVICE.
In honor of the organization that pro-
vides so much essential information
to the U.S. on a daily basis, take some
time out of your normal ESL activities
to do some new activities with the
weather.
HOW TO TEACH
THE WEATHER: NEW
IDEAS FOR YOUR ESL
CLASSROOM
1
YOUR WEATHER UP NEXT
Studying the weather offers a
unique opportunity for reading prac-
tice. By giving your students a copy
of a weather map available in a na-
tional newspaper (like USA today),
they can get an idea of the weather
in a large area. Before they can un-
derstand the map, though, you will
need to review the different symbols
that are used there. Depending on
the age of your students, they may
or may not be familiar with the terms
warm front, cold front, high-pressure
area and low-pressure area and the
symbols which represent them on the
map. Give your students some back-
ground on the words and the symbols,
and then challenge their reading skills
by asking information that they can
only find on the weather map. You
can also find national weather maps
on weather.com and other web sites.
You may want to have your students
compare the data presented on maps
from different sources and see if the
data match. If not, why do they think
there are discrepancies?
Your students can get some listen-
ing practice with the local weather as
well. Either during the news broad-
cast or later on the channel’s web
site, play the weather segment for
your students, and then ask some
comprehension questions to see how
much they understood. For lower
level students you may want to keep
your comprehension questions sim-
18
ple. What weather is expected? How
should you dress for this weather? For
more advanced students, ask more
advanced questions. What are the
expected high and low temperatures?
What time is sunset? You should vary
your questions based on the informa-
tion that the newscaster presents.
2
SEVERE WEATHER
You hope that it is not too of-
ten, but there are times when se-
vere weather threatens your location.
Make sure your students understand
what “severe weather” means, and
then as a class brainstorm a list of
the possible conditions that may be
considered severe weather. Your list
should include hurricanes, tropical
storms, tornadoes, blizzards, hail, tsu-
nami, freezing rain and strong winds.
To go with your list of severe weather
terms, have your students list what
the effects of this type of weather can
have on the area it hits. They should
include dangers to people in the area
as well as potential damages to sur-
roundings.
Using the list of severe weather condi-
tions you have compiled, have each
student select one type of severe
weather to research. She should
gather information to include in a bro-
chure on how to behave in that par-
ticular type of severe weather. Your
students should write out the warning
signs of their particular weather, what
to do if that weather hits, how to pre-
pare in advance for that weather, and
which areas of the country are most
likely to be affected and when. Then
she should compile that information
into a brochure. Copy each brochure
and then send it home with each of
your students. Encourage your stu-
dents to talk with their families about
severe weather conditions that they
might experience and to make a fam-
ily plan in case of an emergency.
FEMA has a useful template avail-
able on their website (www.ready.gov/
translations/_downloads/familyemer-
gencyplan.pdf) that you may want to
send home with each of your students
to use with their families.
3 MORE THAN JUST LOCAL
Tracking weather does not have
to be a local only activity. In today’s
world, communication is easier than
ever, and the globe has never seemed
smaller. Have your class take a global
approach to the weather by tracking
the conditions in another world city.
You can choose your cities in a cou-
ple of different ways. One way is to
have each student select a city from
his native country and then do a daily
check of the weather in that location.
Another way to choose cities for your
students would be to compile a large
list of cities that they think might have
interesting weather. If you put each
city on a small slip of paper, have your
students draw a city from the slips of
paper, and that city will be his assign-
ment for the remainder of the month.
Every day, for one month, each stu-
dent should record the weather con-
ditions of his city. You should require
measurements on temperature, rain-
fall, wind and sky conditions. If you
like, you can challenge your students
for additional information like allergen
levels, dew points or wind chill. When
the month is up, have your students
compile their information in some type
of graph. Then, give each student an
opportunity to share some of his infor-
mation with the class.
While each student is tracking the
weather for his individual city, your
class should track the weather for the
city in which you live. Again, at the end
of the month tabulate the data. You
can then have your students compare
and contrast the weather in your city
with the city they tracked throughout
the month. Is there a city they would
prefer to their own because of the
weather?
STUDYING THE WEATHER CAN BE
MORE THAN JUST SUNNY DAYS AND
RAINY SONGS.
Take your weather studies to the next
level this month in honor of the Na-
tional Weather Service’s birthday on
October 1st with these not so typical
weather activities!
5 Fun Games that Teach
the Weather
Are you looking for a fresh way to teach
your ESL students common weather
words? Are you looking for a new way
to review weather expressions and vo-
cabulary?
HOW TO TEACH
WEATHER: 5 FUN
GAMES AND ACTIVITIES
1
PIN THE TAIL ON THE GLOBE
After introducing or reviewing a list
of weather terms, post a world map on
your classroom wall. Take a few moments
to introduce your students to the terms
equator and pole and discuss what types
of weather the residents at each place
(human or otherwise) experience year
round. Then, depending on the time of
year, discuss with your students what the
weather may be like in the Northern and
Southern Hemispheres. Finally, review
weather in specific areas like rain forests
and deserts. Now it is time for fun. Give
each student in turn a marker with either
a pushpin or piece of tape or other adhe-
sive. This is especially entertaining if you
can take a picture of the student or have
her draw a small self-portrait. Blindfold
one student, give her three turns while
she wears the blindfold, and then point
her in the direction of the world map.
The student should then place the mark-
er somewhere on the world map. You
can encourage her to aim for the type
of weather she thinks she would enjoy.
Then remove the blindfold and have your
student describe the weather where she
is on the map. Give each student a turn
to place himself on the map while blind-
folded and then tell the class about the
weather at his location.
2
I’M GOING ON VACATION
Do you have a dream vacation?
Most people can imagine where they
would like to go whether it is skiing on a
dramatic slope or sunning on a peaceful
beach. Give your students some prac-
tice with weather words by getting them
thinking about their dream vacation.
Have your class sit in a circle and ask a
volunteer to start. The person who takes
the first turn will also take the last turn
in the game. With each turn taker, the
person should first describe in about two
sentences the type of weather he would
like on his vacation, and then tell the rest
of the class where he will go on that vaca-
tion. For example, “I like sunny skies and
warm ocean water. I’m going on vacation
to Hawaii.” The second person, whoever
is sitting to the left of the person that just
went, will describe her dream vacation
weather, and then tell the class where
she is going on vacation. Then she must
also repeat where the first student is go-
ing on vacation. The third student then
tells the class about his dream vacation
weather and then where he will go. He
also says where student number two will
go and then where student number one
will go. Continue in this manner until you
make it all the way around the circle to
the first student who must say, in the cor-
rect order, where each of his classmates
will take his dream vacation. Feel free to
prompt students throughout the game
if they are stumped, but do not be sur-
prised if the students do it on their own.
If you have the map on the wall from the
previous game, you could also let your
students put their markers on the globe
where they said they would like to vaca-
tion after the game is finished.
3
TWENTY QUESTIONS
Here is a game that reviews not
only weather words but also question
asking. Have one student choose a loca-
tion he would like to visit. You can supply
a list of possibilities or just let him choose
at random. The rest of the class takes
turns asking questions about the desti-
nation trying to determine where the per-
son chose. Encourage your students to
use questions about the weather at the
beginning to narrow down the possibili-
ties. If the class cannot guess after twen-
ty questions, the student answering the
questions wins. If they are able to guess
before using all twenty questions, the
class wins. Give each student a chance
to be the question answerer. If you have
a particularly large class, you may want
to break your students into small groups
to play the game.
4
CLOTHING RELAY
This game requires more prepara-
tion than the others and a small financial
investment, but you can use the props
anytime you teach about weather. Start
by getting a collection of clothes that are
appropriate for all weather conditions,
bathing suits, hats, scarves, shorts, rain-
coats, sunglasses, etc. You can ask for
donations from parents, friends or pur-
chase some second hand items at a thrift
store. Put them all into a large bin and
place them at the front of the class. Then
divide your class into two teams and
have each team chose a volunteer to
stand up front with the collection of cloth-
ing. The rest of the class should line up at
the back of the room in teams. For each
round, you will announce a weather con-
dition and one person from each team
should run up to the front of the room.
They must then run up to the person on
their team who is standing by the cloth-
ing and chose an item that is appropriate
for that type of weather. The runner must
then place the item on the other student
without the other student’s assistance.
The first person to choose an appropri-
ate item of clothing for his teammate and
put in on the teammate appropriately
scores a point for the team. Continue un-
til everyone has had a turn or until you
have used all your weather words. The
team with the most points wins.
5
CLOTHING STACKER
This is another game you can play
with the collection of all weather clothing.
Again, divide your class into two teams.
You should also divide the clothing into
two equal piles. Again, have one per-
son volunteer to wear the clothing, but
this time the opposite team will dress
him or her in all the clothing from their
pile. That person then returns to his own
team and stands at the front of the room.
The others are in line at the back of the
room. Begin a relay race in which one
person at a time runs up to the dressed
member of their team, removes a piece
of clothing, and announces to you or
another judge what type of weather in
which that item can be worn. After get-
ting an okay from the judge, he runs
back to the rest of the team with the
item. Then the next person takes a turn.
Continue until the person up front has
been stripped of all his weather clothing.
The first team to finish wins the game.
WHEN IT COMES TO TEACHING
WEATHER, DO NOT BE A DRIP. PUT
SOME FUN AND EXCITEMENT INTO
YOUR CLASS AND DO A WEATHER
LESSON BASED ON GAMES. It will en-
ergize your students and challenge them
to think on their feet, and weather will be-
come an instinctive part of their vocabu-
lary.
19
 How To Teach
Days Of The Week
DAYS OF THE WEEK ARE GENER-
ALLY TAUGHT VERY EARLY ON
IN ESL COURSES SO IT IS IMPOR-
TANT TO INCORPORATE RECENTLY
STUDIED MATERIAL INTO YOUR
LESSONS WITHOUT OVERWHELM-
ING YOUR STUDENTS.
For this example, it is assumed that
students have studied ordinal num-
bers (1st-10th), subjects (math, sci-
ence, art, music, etc), and the simple
present tense.
HOW TO PROCEED
1
WARM UP
Use the start of class as a re-
view of the previous lesson. Students
will feel more confident in a class if
you start out with material they have
already covered and it will also pre-
pare them to use that same material
later on in the lesson.
2
INTRODUCE – DAYS OF
THE WEEK (VOCABULARY)
Write the words Sunday through
Saturday on the board one at a time
demonstrating pronunciation and drill-
ing as you go. Practice the days of the
week in order using choral repetition
and then challenge your students by
pointing to words out of order to test
their pronunciation as a class and in-
dividually.
3 INTRODUCE –
DAYS OF THE WEEK
(COMPREHENSION)
Tell students “Today is ~” using what-
ever the day of the week is. Tell them
that they go to school on Monday,
Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and
Friday or that they study English on
Monday and Wednesday. Use several
very basic examples to give students
an idea of what these words might
mean. Ask students for the meaning
and translation of each word. It should
be easy once they get started.
20
4 PRACTICE –
DAYS OF THE WEEK
filled in for each day and number)
do the following. Teach students this
structure:
Do an activity that gives students lots
of practice with the days of the week.
- A: Do you study subject ordi-
A card game such as Go Fish with
nal number period on day of the
days of the week cards would be ap-
week?
propriate to play in groups of three to
- B: Yes, I do! or No, I don’t.
four. If using the game Go Fish simpli-
Have two worksheets prepared with
fy the dialogue so that a student only
different school schedules where only
has to look at the person he is ask-
ten or fifteen classes during the week
ing for a card and say the day of the
are the same. Ask students to work to-
week while the student being asking
gether (by taking turns using the mod-
for a card has to say only the day of
the week as they hand over the card
el dialogue) to determine which ten or
fifteen classes they have together.
or “Go Fish.”
5 PRACTICE - REVIEW
In order to get students warmed
7 REVIEW
Do a final class activity at the
end of class to recheck comprehen-
up for the next step where they com-
sion. Ask your students true or false
bine their new vocabulary with pre-
questions about their school sched-
viously learned material, conduct a
ule. For instance if the class studies
review activity. A good game to prac-
English on Mondays and Wednes-
tice listening, reading, and pronuncia-
days, say “You study English on
tion requires only a set of flashcards
for each group of students. Ideally
Tuesday. True or False?” or “You go
to school on Sunday. True or False?”
groups should be three to five stu-
dents. Since there are only seven
days of the week, perhaps combine
ASKING STUDENTS QUESTIONS
days of the week with a review of or-
ABOUT THEIR SCHEDULE USING
dinal numbers, for example 1st-10th,
THE SIMPLE PRESENT TENSE IS THE
and a list of subjects they study at
MOST BASIC WAY TO USE DAYS OF
school. Once each group has a set of
THE WEEK AT THIS EARLY STAGE.
Days of the week will come up time
cards, ask them to spread the cards,
and time again during their English
face up, on their desks. Explain the
studies. When your students begin
activity and begin. You will say a word
studying other tenses questions using
aloud and the first person to repeat
days of the week as a time reference
the word correctly and slap the corre-
sponding card gets to keep that card.
Repeat until all the cards have been
gathered. Whoever has the most
is common. “What did you do on Sun-
day?” or “What will you do on Friday?”
type questions will continually review
their day of the week vocabulary.
cards in the class should read aloud
all the cards he collected. Repeat one
or two more times depending on your
students’ enthusiasm.
6 PRODUCTION – COMBO
At this point have the students
do a pair activity. For example if you
create a worksheet with a school
schedule (a grid that has Monday to
Friday along the top, the numbers one
to seven or eight depending on your
school along the left, and subjects
How to Teach
Question Structures
Teachers often give students plenty of
time to practice answering questions
without dedicating sufficient practice
time to asking them. For example,
Crisscross is a very simple warm up
activity where students answer ques-
tions such as “How’s the weather?”
but after nearly a year of doing this
activity, students may struggle to
come up with the correct question
for the answer “It’s sunny!” Students
can become accustomed to hearing
key words in questions, in this case
weather, and answering correctly
without paying any attention to the
question’s structure.
Here are some ideas to help students
focus on this more.
SO, HOW DO I
TEACH QUESTION
STRUCTURES?
1 INTRODUCE QUESTIONS
AND ANSWERS TOGETHER
During the introduction of new materi-
als, you can ask the target question
when trying to elicit vocabulary. This
way, students will hear it while they
are focusing on the structure of the
answer and after practicing the tar-
get answer you can go back and do
some pronunciation practice with the
question too. Question and answer
structures are normally introduced
together because for example “How’s
the weather?” and “It’s ~.” are a pair
and learning one without the other is
not very beneficial.
2 PRACTICE THEM
TOGETHER, TOO
Practice activities should also include
both structures. For speaking practice
this is easy because interview activi-
ties and model dialogues will certainly
include both. Written exercises usual-
ly make students focus on answering
the questions and not on the questions
themselves. For structures where stu-
dents have to compose their own re-
sponses such as “What’s your favorite
sport?” it makes sense that students
would be more concerned with what
they should say in response. On quiz-
zes, exams, and in real life however,
students are going to need to be able
to ask as well as answer questions
so include some activities that draw
attention to a question’s word order.
You can do this by adding a section of
answers where students have to write
the question for each answer. If this
is too challenging you can have stu-
dents match questions with answers
or, better yet, fill in blanks within the
question. These exercises will help
students practice question structures
more extensively.
3 PRODUCTION STAGE
During production exercises,
questions are usually provided so
that students have some guidelines
or organization for their activities.
Model dialogues and role-plays can
be adapted to give students more
practice forming questions. You can
also play Fruit Basket by asking the
student in the middle to say a ques-
tion and having everyone who would
answer “Yes” change seats. Example
questions might be “Do you like blue?
Have you eaten sushi? Are you a
student?” This can be used for many
different question structures and lev-
els. You could play Fruit Basket as a
review activity at the end of the first
lesson using the answer structure and
as a warm up in the next lesson using
the question structure. Students may
struggle at first but the more familiar
they are with asking questions the
easier it will be for them to learn new
ones.
4 FOCUS
ON QUESTION WORDS
Make questions part of general review
material and activities before exams
or quizzes by dedicating a section to
them. If you have a study guide for
students, make sure that students
write their answers to questions as
well as complete the questions. This
will make them more aware of often
overlooked words in questions. For
“How’s the weather?” students may
be tempted to say something simi-
lar to “What weather?” as the target
question because many questions in
beginning and intermediate English
lessons start with what and because
they recognize the word weather as
the word that links it to the answer.
When creating blanks in the ques-
tions, leave in words such as weather
and focus more on who, what, where,
when, why, and how as well as words
such as your in questions like “What’s
your favorite sport?” When conduct-
ing review games, you can include a
section where students have to give
the question for the answer provided.
This may be the most challenging
section of the game so awarding ex-
tra points for correct answers may be
appropriate.
WHILE MANY CLASSES CONCEN-
TRATE ON HAVING STUDENTS
ANSWER QUESTIONS, REAL LIFE
DOES NOT WORK THIS WAY.
Students are going to have to be
able to both ask and answer ques-
tions when given the opportunity to
speak English outside the classroom
so teachers need to devote plenty
of time to question related activities.
Once your lesson plans start including
more of these, students will have bet-
ter success remembering and using
questions.
21
How To Teach Time: Telling Time
Activities And Games
Telling time can be tricky for some stu-
dents so it is important that they have
a very strong grasp on numbers before
trying to proceed with this lesson. De-
pending on the age of your students,
they may struggle because they have
not learned to tell time in their native
language so teaching general refer-
ences to time such as ‘in the morning’
and ‘at night’ would be more beneficial.
HOW TO PROCEED
1
WARM UP
Get your students in a numbers
frame of mind by doing some pronun-
ciation practice. Only the numbers one
through fifty-nine are going to be used
but review zero through one hundred
anyway. A game or two of bingo would
be good practice. Give students a five
by five grid with the center square filled
in. Ask them to write any numbers zero
through one hundred in the remaining
squares, say random numbers (starting
with the one already filled in) and play
until a few students have gotten bingo.
2
INTRODUCE – TIME: HOURS
Draw a clock face on the board
to demonstrate. Start by showing times
such as 7:00 and 11:00 and writing
them on the board next to clock faces.
Check to ensure that your students un-
derstand that the short hand indicates
the hour and should be both said and
written first. Have students repeat “One
o’clock, two o’clock...” after you. Ask
students to come to the board to both
write and draw times you give them. For
example, say “Rachel, it is 9 o’clock.”
The student should write 9:00 and draw
a clock face indicating that time.
3 INTRODUCE – TIME:
MINUTES
Move on to minutes. Show that there
are sixty minutes in an hour and that
the long hand indicates minutes which
should be said and written after the hour.
Now demonstrate times such as 8:10
and 3:42 just as you did for hours in the
previous step. Ask students “What time
22
is it?” after drawing new clock faces on
the board. Ask a student “What time is
it?” while pointing to the clock in your
classroom. See if there are any volun-
teers to draw clock faces on the board
and ask the class what time it is. Make
sure your students understand that “It’s
8:10 o’clock.” is incorrect.
4 PRACTICE – TIME
Have a worksheet prepared with
a section containing clocks show-
ing various times. Ask the students to
complete this section independently
and check the answers as a class. If
students are struggling, more practice
may be necessary. In the second sec-
tion ask students to draw in the hands
of the clock and then ask their partners
“What time is it?”
5
INTRODUCE – TIME:
VOCABULARY
Once your students have a basic grasp
on numbers and telling time, introduce
time related vocabulary such as those
listed below:
- a quarter past
- It’s a quarter past 4.
- half past
- It’s half past 9.
- a quarter to
- It’s a quarter to 12.
- AM
- It’s 7:50 AM.
- PM
- It’s 11:20 PM.
- noon
- midnight
Your textbook will determine what exact
vocabulary you need to cover. Practice
pronunciation of all the new words and
ask students to tell you the time shown
on the board in two different ways. For
example “It’s 7:15. It’s a quarter past 7.”
Extensive drilling and practice activities
are necessary at this stage.
6 PRACTICE – TIME
Continuing the worksheet used
above, students can match sentences
with clock faces or even with images.
For example “It’s 9:30 AM” might match
up with an image of a student at school
while “It’s midnight” would go with an
image of a person sleeping.
7 PRODUCTION – TIME
Teach your students the model
dialogue below:
- A: Excuse me. What time is it?
- B: It’s 9:30.
- A: Thank you.
- B. Your welcome.
Have students practice this dialogue in
pairs using clock faces drawn on the
board or printed on their worksheets.
Students should take turns being A and
B. After five to ten minutes of practice
ask for students to demonstrate the
conversation to the class in order to
ensure that students are correctly say-
ing the time that corresponds with each
image.
8
REVIEW
To end the class use another
short activity to review what has been
covered in class. Ask students to tell
you the time shown on the board,
translate phrases, and ask for the time
to ensure that students are comfortable
using all the new material and review
anything that gives them difficulty both
before the class ends and at the begin-
ning of the next lesson. To build upon
this lesson, the following lessons may
be based around the structures “What
time do you ~?” and “I ~ at 7:30” which
practices both time and the simple
present quite extensively.
General references to time such as at
night, in the morning, and on Sunday
come up quite often in ESL classes
while specific times such as 9:35 do not.
BE AWARE OF THE FACT THAT
STUDENTS WILL NEED PRACTICE
TELLING TIME THROUGHOUT THE
COURSE OF THEIR STUDIES SO DUR-
ING WARM UP ACTIVITIES OR ON
WORKSHEETS TRY TO INCLUDE SPE-
CIFIC TIMES REGULARLY.
What Time Do You Have?
Telling Time Activities
ONE OF THE MOST BASIC LESSONS
YOU WILL APPROACH IS TELLING
TIME. IT IS SUCH A KEY ELEMENT
FOR BEGINNERS WHO MAY JUST BE
LEARNING NUMBERS AND LEARN-
ING HOW TO NAVIGATE BASIC CON-
CEPTS IN ENGLISH.
I find that the more hands-on you can
be with telling time, the faster the stu-
dents will master it. These activities
will give you a collection of tools to
approach telling time for adults and
children.
TELLING TIME
ACTIVITIES
1 INTRODUCTION
A fun way to introduce telling
time is to simply ask students, “What
time is it?” You’ll be amazed at all the
glazed looks you may get and the
unique attempts to answer correctly!
It is good to let them try and some of
them may already know the basics.
You can then tell them what time it is
and then jump right in. There are a lot
of details and variables to telling time
correctly. You need to teach vocabu-
lary which include: o’clock, a.m., p.m.,
quarter after, quarter till compared to
:45, 6:30 compared to half past 6.
To practice all of the above the best
way to start out is with a blank clock
drawn on the board with no numbers.
Have the students help you fill it in. Go
through which numbers are after the
hour and which are before, and how
those are expressed.
Then draw the two hands and ex-
plain that one hand is for hours and
one is for minutes. You can do a lot
of practice just with drawing different
times on the board. What could be a
drill can be made a lot more amusing
by getting students up to the board to
draw in the hands for different times.
You can also create handouts that
they can then use for pair activities or
homework.
2 WHAT TIME DO YOU…?
One of the best ways to practice
telling time is to associate time with
things you do at that time of day. You
can do it with worksheets, cards, or
even on the board. Explain morning,
afternoon, and evening and what the
cutoffs are for each. Here are some
points to explain:
• 7a.m. until 11:55 am is morning
time.
• 12:00 or noon (also lunchtime)
until 5:30p.m. is the afternoon.
• After 5:30 p.m. (or when it be-
comes dark) until 12:00 midnight
is the evening or night time.
• Midnight until 6a.m. is early morn-
ing.
These provide good guidelines to
then lead into the questions
What time do you _________?
and When do you ___________ ?
Assigning activities to times of day as
well as a specific time will ensure that
they understand the entire concept of
time. There are lots of ways to prac-
tice this like simple question and an-
swer. For example: What time do you
brush your teeth/wake up/eat dinner/
have English class? Have students
come up with their own ideas and take
the opportunity to teach and use new
vocabulary.
3 WALL CLOCKS
Being able to use real clocks
that the students can manipulate will
make for hours of enjoyment and
good solid review. It’s a good idea to
have at least three to four wall clocks
for this purpose. You can make good
use of them in several ways. Young
learners especially love manipulating
the clocks, playing teacher and doing
Q and A with the clocks. Adults also
enjoy the hands-on activities using
the clocks and it really does make
the lessons very memorable. You can
have students play a variety of games
and adapt them for difficulty. You
could have a student mark a time on
the clock and not show anyone. The
group then has to ask questions to de-
duct what time is on the clock. Or you
could have them do races — shout
out a time and see who can put the
accurate time on the clock the fastest.
Really your options are endless when
you have a few old wall clocks at your
disposal.
4
HOW MANY WAYS
CAN I SAY…?
There are lots of variable ways to ask
and answer questions regarding time.
Give them lots of options and provide
lots of examples. Some of those are:
What time do you have?
What time does ------- start / fin-
ish/?
What time is it?
Do you know the time?
Do you know what time it is?
What time do you... (do some-
thing — wake up, go to sleep,
etc.)
When is the movie / class / con-
cert / etc.?
MAKE TELLING TIME STIMULATING
AND MEMORABLE AND STUDENTS
WILL WALK AWAY FEELING REALLY
ACCOMPLISHED. THIS LESSON IS
ALSO ONE WHICH ENABLES THEM
TO THEN GO OUT INTO THE WORLD
AND USE A NEW SKILL.
It’s good to encourage them to prac-
tice it with their friends or even ask
strangers what time it is. It is em-
powering for the students and you
can generate many different ways to
reuse these activities time and time
again.
23
 How To Teach Directions
DIRECTIONS CAN BE CHALLENGING
TO TEACH HOWEVER ITS PRACTICAL
USES ARE READILY UNDERSTOOD
BY STUDENTS AND THERE ARE
MANY FUN ACTIVITIES YOU CAN
INCORPORATE INTO YOUR LESSONS
TO MAKE THEM MORE ENJOYABLE.
Typically the first directions lesson
would follow lessons introducing vo-
cabulary such as post office, police
station, school, bank, playground,
park, library, etc. since these will be
used extensively in directions les-
sons.
HOW TO PROCEED
1 WARM UP - DIRECTIONS
Get your students interested in
learning how to give directions. On
the board draw a rough map of the
neighborhood, just a few streets and
the school will do. Ask “Where is the
school?” Have a student come to
the board and point it out. Then ask
where a few other landmarks are and
have students draw and label them on
your map.
2 INTRODUCE - DIRECTIONS
VOCABULARY
Introduce the words ‘right’ and ‘left’.
Try to elicit the meaning or translation
of these words from the students and
write them on the board with arrows
demonstrating each direction. Once
their meanings have been made clear
to the class, demonstrate proper pro-
nunciation. It may be fun to teach your
students this little trick to remember
right and left: if you hold your arms
out in front of you, flex your wrists up
and extend just your thumb and index
fingers on both hands, the left hand
with have a capital L for left.
3 PRACTICE
Ask students to do some choral
repetition. Call on students to model
pronunciation in order to check their
progress on the individual level and
do some quick comprehension tests.
Ask a student to “Turn right” or “Turn
left” with a demonstration and after a
few individual checks feel free to have
the whole class join in making sure
they are listening to the words right
and left and not just turning from side
24
to side by occasionally instructing
them to “Turn left, turn left” or “Turn
right, turn right” which should end up
with everyone facing the back of the
classroom. Anyone who isn’t facing
the correct direction needs to focus
on the words more closely.
4 INTRODUCE - DIRECTIONS
PHRASES
Introduce the following phrases:
-Turn right/left (at the 1st/2nd/3rd cor-
ner).
-Go straight.
-You’ll see it on the right/left.
-It’s across from (the school, the park,
the post office)
-It’s next to (the police station, the
playground, the library)
Explain the meaning of each phrase
and lead some pronunciation practice
exercises.
5 PRACTICE
Mark your imaginary present
location on a rough map like the one
from Step 1 and ask your students
“How do I get to the ~?” Call on one
student to give just the first section of
directions, then another student for
the second section, and then another
until you’ve reached your destination.
Repeat until your students feel com-
fortable enough with the new phrases
to give a whole set of directions on
their own. Next, mark a beginning po-
sition on the map and give a set of di-
rections. Ask students “Where am I?”
to see if they were able to follow along
with you and repeat. If necessary, go
back to review anything that seems
difficult for the students.
6
PRACTICE – DIRECTIONS
After demonstrating the dia-
logue, ask the students to work in
pairs to practice giving directions. The
model dialogue should resemble this:
A: Excuse me. How do I get to the ~?
B: Turn left. Turn right at the 3rd cor-
ner. You’ll see it on your left.
A: Thank you!
B: You’re welcome.
Ask for volunteers to demonstrate
their conversations to the class. Over-
acting is always encouraged. Any dif-
ficulties during a demonstration can
indicate which areas may need further
review. See if classmates can correct
errors if they occur.
7 PRODUCTION –
DIRECTIONS
For further practice, if appropriate
for your students and school, create
a maze of desks in your classroom
and have students give directions to a
blindfolded classmate. Having teams
race is generally discouraged in this
situation as it may lead to injuries.
Generally having friends guide each
other through the maze has the most
successful results. As an alternative,
direction themed board games or
worksheets will also provide the nec-
essary practice and would be more
appropriate for larger classes.
8 REVIEW – DIRECTIONS
Ask for translations or demon-
strations of all associated vocabulary
and phrases as well as directions from
one place to another. Encourage stu-
dents to ask questions if something is
unclear. Start the next few classes off
with direction related warm up activi-
ties to help students retain all this new
vocabulary.
WHEN TEACHING DIRECTIONS,
IT IS INCREDIBLY IMPORTANT TO
CHOOSE ONE STRUCTURE AND
STICK TO IT SO THAT YOUR STU-
DENTS DO NOT BECOME UNNEC-
ESSARILY CONFUSED.
The examples above use the struc-
ture ‘Turn right/left at the 1st/2nd/3rd
corner’ but you may choose to teach
‘Turn right/left onto Smith Street.’ or
‘Go three blocks and turn right/left.’
or ‘Take the 1st/2nd/3rd right/left after
the school.’
The Keys to Teaching
Your Students to Give Directions
GETTING FROM ONE PLACE TO
ANOTHER IS NOT ALWAYS EASY.
VERY RARELY CAN A PERSON
TRAVEL ON A STRAIGHT PATH FROM
ONE POINT TO ANOTHER, SO IT IS
IMPORTANT FOR ESL STUDENTS TO
LEARN HOW TO GIVE DIRECTIONS.
In this activity your students will gain
the tools they need to successfully di-
rect someone from point A to point B
and maybe enjoy the scenery along
the way.
HOW TO TEACH
DIRECTIONS IN YOUR
ESL CLASSROOM
1 WHERE WOULD YOU GO?
Most international students take
special pride when talking about their
home countries. Ask your students to
suggest some points of interest to a
visitor to their home countries. Make
sure your students know the grammati-
cal structure for giving advice. “If you
go to [my home country], you should
see [point of interest].” Students can
suggest locations tied to sports, history
or entertainment. Encourage your stu-
dents to give whatever details they can
about the locations.
To further the idea of visiting a new
place, provide some travel brochures
for your students to look at. You can
find these types of brochures at rest
stops along the highway or at visitor
centers for cities. Give your students
time to look through the brochures and
think about what they would say about
one point of interest in their country.
Have your students make some notes
on information they would give to visi-
tors using the brochures as an exam-
ple.
2 HOW WOULD YOU GET
THERE?
Once your students are thinking about
interesting places to visit, start a con-
versation about the different modes of
travel. As a class, brainstorm as many
different modes of travel as possible.
Note that this activity will likely leave
your students in need of specific vo-
cabulary, so you may want to allow dic-
tionaries during the discussion. Make
the list as detailed as possible. Do not
forget less popular modes of travel
including burrow, submarine, roller
skates, dune buggy and any others
you can think of. To elicit these travel
modes from your students, you may
want to mention settings in which those
types of travel would be most appropri-
ate, the Grand Canyon for example.
After you have exhausted your list, pair
your students and have each person
tell the other what means of transpor-
tation he would use to get to that point
of interest in his home country. Encour-
age your students that a one-word an-
swer is not enough. Before you take
the plane overseas, what mode would
you use to get to the airport? After the
plane landed what mode of transporta-
tion would you use?
3 CAN YOU GIVE ME
DIRECTIONS?
Finally, have your students give spe-
cific directions from your classroom to
their place of residence. Before start-
ing the directions, compile a list of
vocabulary words that are necessary
when giving directions. Include right,
left, go straight, turn and stop. Then
have each student write out very de-
tailed and specific directions how to
get from your classroom to the place
that he lives. It should be so specific
as to include instructions like, “Stand
up from the desk. Turn right and walk
around the desks to the classroom
door. Turn the doorknob...” Pair your
students together and let them read
each other’s directions. If a student
has questions or is unclear about the
directions, the writer should clarify or
revise his directions.
As a final project, have each student
write directions from your classroom
to the school library, cafeteria or other
location nearby. Again, have your stu-
dents write the directions, but this time
they should not write the final destina-
tion on the paper. The final sentence in
each set of directions should be, “You
have arrived.” Then collect and redis-
tribute the papers to your class. Take
some time and allow each student to
follow the directions on the paper ex-
actly. When each student has finished
following the directions, have him write
down his location on the bottom of the
paper and then return to the classroom.
The writer of the directions should then
look to see if the person following his
directions ended up in the correct loca-
tion. If all goes well, the intended des-
tination will be the actual destination.
4 DID I HEAR YOU
CORRECTLY?
If you are feeling especially adventur-
ous and your students are willing to ac-
company you, you can make a game
out of giving directions. Once again,
pair your students together. Have one
student stand at one end of a playing
field or the classroom (though a larger
area is better in which to play). The
other member of the pair should stand
at the other end of the location with a
blindfold on. Once all the teams are
ready, you should place an item some-
where in the playing area between the
team members, just be sure it is not
too close to any one player. Each see-
ing player should then shout directions
to his teammate across the field lead-
ing that person to the item you left for
them. The first player should remain
stationary throughout the game. The
first player to reach the item and his di-
rection-giving partner are the winners.
You can then repeat the game with the
players’ roles reversed. This time move
the object to a new location. This activ-
ity will challenge your students’ ability
to both give and understand directions.
WHAT WOULD WE DO IF WE HAD
TO FIGURE OUT ON OUR OWN HOW
TO GET FROM PLACE A TO PLACE B?
MOST PEOPLE WOULD PROBABLY
STAY IN ONE LOCATION FOR THEIR
ENTIRE LIVES.
Empower your students to give and
follow directions by teaching them the
necessary vocabulary and then giv-
ing them practice with directions. You
never know where they may end up if
you don’t.
25
 5 Fabulous Ways to Use Total
Physical Response in Classroom
TOTAL PHYSICAL RESPONSE (TPR)
IS A METHOD THAT WAS DEVEL-
OPED BY JAMES ASHER IN THE LATE
1960S, WITH THE GOAL OF HELPING
STUDENTS ACQUIRE A SECOND
LANGUAGE.
The main assumption is that a sec-
ond language can be learned in the
same way as the first – through the
same natural processes. So, TPR
tries to mimic these processes by re-
quiring students to respond to com-
mands, which in turn require physical
movements. Naturally, this method
was embraced by ESL teachers back
then, but it is still quite popular today,
particularly when teaching children or
beginners.
THE ADVANTAGES:
ESL activities with TPR are tremen-
dous fun for students, even for grown
ups once they become less self-con-
scious. But it is precisely because
children are less self-conscious about
moving their bodies around the class-
room, that these activities are excel-
lent ways to get young learners up
and about. Although they require more
out of teachers, physically-speaking,
they require less preparation. Finally,
activities with TPR are great for kin-
esthetic learners who need more ac-
tion or hands on activities. But does
it work? Can we really maximize stu-
dent learning through TPR? Try some
of these TPR activities and see for
yourself!
1 SIMON SAYS
(WITH A SPIN!)
Clearly, it’s a classic among TPR ac-
tivities, one that is more commonly
used to teach the parts of the body.
But why not go beyond the simple,
“Simon says touch your nose” and
try more complex commands? Say
you are teaching your students how
to give directions. Clear up a space
in the classroom, one your students
can easily maneuver around. Your
commands could be directions: “Si-
mon says turn right, Simon says go
straight ahead.” Create a mini neigh-
borhood! Place a flashcard or picture
26
on each of your students’ desks: a
bank, a pharmacy, a shopping center,
etc. Arrange the desks so they create
“streets”. Students take turns giving
each other directions to and from lo-
cations in their neighborhood.
2 CHARADES
Another classic game, this one
is best suited to action verbs and
sports. For example, to teach sports
you must first introduce each with
flashcards, act out each of the sports
yourself, and have students say each
out loud with you. Then you divide
the class into two teams. Each stu-
dent must take a flashcard, picture
or card with a sport written on it, and
pantomime the movements involved
in playing the sport so that his or her
teammates can guess what it is. En-
courage them to be silly or exagger-
ate if they have to. Teammates have
to answer in complete sentences: you
are playing basketball.
3
SONGS
Young ESL learners love to sing
songs, but if you add movement or
miming, they’ll enjoy them so much
more. It is, in fact, difficult for most
children to sing songs while sitting
absolutely still. Singing and moving
comes naturally to them. So, why not
take advantage of this and incorpo-
rate lots of songs with movement?
Here are some great songs you can
use or adapt to suit your needs:
• Here We Go ‘Round the Mul-
berry Bush (www.esl-kids.com/
songs/mulberrybush.html) – Use
the original song and have your
students mime the washing of
clothes, ironing, etc., or replace
these actions with personal hy-
giene (brush our teeth, wash our
hands, comb our hair, etc.)
• Head, Shoulders, Knees and
Toes – A classic song used to
teach kids the parts of the body.
• Wheels on the Bus (www.esl-kids.
com/songs/wheelsonthebus.html)
– The wheels on the bus go round
and round and so should your stu-
dents - go round the classroom!
Have them line up and go around
the classroom in a single or dou-
ble file, or arrange their seats so
that they resemble a bus.
And these are but a few. ESL Kids has
plenty for you to choose from.
4
A STROLL AROUND
THE CLASSROOM
This activity is great for kids and adult
students. You’ll need several objects
or props/realia - as many as you’d like
to use. First, you pantomime a series
of actions while you say the phrases.
Then you say the phrases and ask
a student to pantomime the actions.
You can try this with several students
and use different objects. Finally, they
should do it on their own and walk
around the classroom interacting with
objects. Try something like this:
1. You open your bag.
2. You look inside.
3. You take out a pencil case.
4. You open it.
5. You close it.
6. You put it in the bag.
7. You look at your book.
8. You open it.
9. You close it.
10. You touch your ear.
11. You find your pencil!
5 MIME ROLE PLAYS
These are also a lot of fun for
adult students! Give each student a
role to act out but tell one of them that
they’ve lost their voice. Tell this stu-
dent what situation he or she has to
act out, but don’t tell the other student
what it is. For example:
Student A – You need to find a phar-
macy and you ask someone for direc-
tions. You have lost your voice, and
you can’t say a word.
Student B – You will be stopped in the
street by someone who needs direc-
tions, but this person can’t speak, so
you must interpret their gestures to
find out where they need to go.
SO, GET YOUR STUDENTS OUT OF
THEIR SEATS AND GET MOVING!
THEY’LL ENJOY THE CHANGE OF
PACE, BUT ABOVE ALL, THEY WILL
LEARN PLENTY.
You’ll Love these Games for
Teaching Anatomy Vocabulary
ALMOST EVERY TEACHER OF
ENGLISH AS A SECOND LANGUAGE
HAS TAUGHT A UNIT ON ANATOMY
AT ONE POINT OR ANOTHER.
Perhaps this is because it is one of
the most tangible sets of vocabulary a
nonnative speaker can learn. Perhaps
it is because our bodies are such an
important part of what makes us
uniquely ourselves. Perhaps it is for
some other reason. Regardless of the
motivation behind the theme, anatom-
ical lessons naturally find themselves
in the ESL classroom. Once you have
given your students some basics on
the parts of the body, try one or more
of the following games to review what
they have learned!
TRY THESE ESL
GAMES FOR
TEACHING ANATOMY
VOCABULARY IN
YOUR CLASSROOM
1 IN THE CLASSROOM
“Simon says touch your
head. Simon says touch your
toes. Touch your ears”.
Whether or not you are good at fol-
lowing directions, Simon Says is a
simple game that you can use to
review the vocabulary of the body.
Having your students go through the
motion of moving and identifying parts
of the body is a great review for vo-
cabulary that you have introduced in
an earlier lesson. You can match the
difficulty of the game to the skill level
of your student – speaking more or
less quickly, using more or less com-
plicated vocabulary. Your students,
too, will have a great time as you
make the game harder and harder to
eliminate players. Give the last one
standing a prize, or just let him be Si-
mon for the next round!
If you are feeling particularly adventur-
ous, you may decide to play a game
of Twister Scare. To play, either use
a Twister mat or create a similar lay-
out of colors on your classroom floor
using craft foam, carpet squares or
construction paper. (Heads up – you
will want to make sure all the desks
are moved from the area in which you
will be playing.) Then ask your class
to brainstorm a list of common
words for parts of the body. Write
each of these body parts on a small
slip of paper and put into a bag or hat.
For each turn, pull one body part from
the pool and either choose a color or
use a spinner or die to determine the
color that will be the goal for that body
part.
Keep playing for as long as you can or
until your students have had enough!
2
IN THE GYM
If you have a bag of old clothes
that you use in your ESL class, that
can also be repurposed for a review of
anatomical vocabulary. They make for
a great relay race when teams have
to identify the parts of the body that
the clothes and accessories are worn
on.
To play, divide your class into two
teams and have each team choose a
model who will eventually wear all of
the clothes. For each turn, have one
player from each team stand on either
side of you as you pull an item out
of the bag. The first person to iden-
tify which part of the body the piece
is worn on wins the piece and should
run to her model and put the piece of
clothing on that person. When you
get to the last piece of clothing in the
bag, the team with more items on their
model is the winner!
3
OUTSIDE
If your students are getting
sleepy in their seats, this anatomy
game is sure to wake them up. Take
your class to a large playing area, out-
side or a gym work well. In this game,
you will call out pairs of body parts
like “Ear to Elbow” (the name of the
game). Students must then rush to
find a partner, and one of them must
put his ear to the other’s elbow. If any-
one is unable to find a partner or does
not match the body parts correctly, he
is eliminated. Give another paring and
each person must find a new partner.
You may choose to make calls such
as head to knee, hand to foot, hip
to hip, shoulder to back or any other
combination you can think of. The last
pair standing wins a prize.
4
IN SMALL GROUPS
Do you want to play a game of
body parts with your students but
get them to think outside the box?
Try the classic game of Operation in
which students must remove “punny”
body parts from an electric surgical
patient. Students will draw cards ask-
ing them to remove such items as the
funny bone, the breadbox, the Adam’s
apple and butterflies in the stomach. If
they touch the sides of the opening for
each piece, a buzzer will sound and
that person loses his turn.
You can use this game as a jumping
off point to talk about idioms or ex-
pressions that have to do with parts of
the body. Challenge your students
to do some research and compile
a list of all the expressions using
body parts that they can find. You
can make this a game in itself by
grouping students and giving them a
set amount of time to come up with
their lists.
JUST BECAUSE LESSONS ON
ANATOMY HAPPEN SO FRE-
QUENTLY IN ESL CLASSES DOES NOT
MEAN THAT YOU CANNOT HAVE
FUN WHILE YOU GIVE THEM.
These games provide a fun review of
what your students have learned and
may also teach them a thing or two.
So try one with your class and get
in some laughs as you do your body
parts review!
27
 How to Teach Prepositions
of Time
PREPOSITIONS OF TIME, LIKE PREP-
OSITIONS OF PLACE, CAN BE CHAL-
LENGING FOR STUDENTS WHO
HAVE DIFFICULTY RECOGNIZING
WHEN TO USE CERTAIN WORDS.
These little words are so important
when speaking English because the
difference between “He’ll go to Italy in
March.” and “He’ll go to Italy at March.”
is the difference between an interme-
diate and an advanced student. While
English learners will not notice how in-
talk about how at is used when talk-
ing about precise times such as “3:00
PM’, in is used when talking about
months, years, or other long periods
of time for example “in July”, and on is
used for sentences with days or dates
like “on Tuesday” or “on March 6th”. It
is all well and good to discuss these
points however in addition to thinking
about these rules students will need
practice using prepositions of time in
sentences.
5 PRODUCE
You can easily play Fruit Bas-
ket in this lesson to give students the
chance to make their own sentences.
Have students arrange their chairs in
a circle and then remove one so a stu-
dent has to stand in the middle. The
standing student should make a sen-
tence, for instance, “My birthday is in
July.” and all the students that have
birthdays in July must change seats
leaving a different student in the mid-

correct their sentences sound, it is so
apparent to native speakers who most
likely do not even know the rules for
when to use these words.
SO, HOW DO I TEACH
PREPOSITIONS OF
TIME?
3
PRACTICE PREPOSITIONS
OF TIME
Have students complete a worksheet
to practice using prepositions of time.
Perhaps in the first section students
circle the correct word to complete
the sentence and are given only two
dle. If students have difficulty coming
up with sentences, you can say one
so that the game continues and does
not come to a complete standstill for
an extended period of time. Sentenc-
es such as “I start school at ~” should
get everyone moving.

1 WARM UP
The warm up should focus on
choices. In the second section have
students fill in the blank. The third sec-
tion could just have a list of phrases
6 REVIEW
At the beginning of the next les-
such as November, my birthday, and son, you can have students complete
time. Students should get some prac- a few sentences using prepositions of
7:15 PM that they have to choose the
tice telling the time and also talking time to briefly review the material. If
correct preposition for. This type of
about months and dates so that they students understand everything well,
worksheet will help students by build-
are reminded of all this vocabulary you can move on to the next topic, in-
ing up their confidence with an easy
before introducing the new topic. You corporate prepositions of time when-
section at the beginning and then
can bring out the clock you used when ever possible, and have a solid review
challenging them with a lot of phrases
teaching your students time or just of this material before an exam.
at the end.
draw clock faces on the board to give

4
them some quick practice. You can
also get the month vocabulary cards PRACTICE MORE SOMETIMES IT’S THE LITTLE WORDS
out and play a quick round or two of
Now that students have spent THAT REALLY TRIP STUDENTS UP.
Go Fish. Whatever activities you did
some time focusing on prepositions of BE SURE TO COMPLETE PLENTY OF
when introducing these topics can be
time, remind them that these prepo- PRACTICE ACTIVITIES TO ENSURE
repeated as long as your students
sitions have other uses too. You will THAT STUDENTS UNDERSTAND
found them enjoyable the first time
need three very short passages for THE APPROPRIATE USE OF EACH
around.
this section. In the first passage de- OF THESE WORDS.

2
INTRODUCE PREPOSI-
TIONS OF PLACE
Next introduce the words at, in, and on
which should be the focus of this les-
son. Your students have probably al-
ready used these words when talking
about prepositions of place so there
should not be any need for pronuncia-
tion practice. Write three sentences
on the board and ask students which
word correctly completes each sen-
tence. This should give you an idea
of how much your students already
know about using these words. Briefly
lete at whenever it occurs without
creating blanks and then tell students
how many times at occurs in the text.
Students can then insert the word
wherever they think it has been delet-
ed. Complete this activity for in and on
as well. Students can complete this
activity individually, in groups, or as a
class. Review the answers as a class
and then talk about when these words
are used as prepositions of time and
when they are used as something
else.

28
How To Teach Prepositions
Of Place
Prepositions of place are an impor-
tant part of the English language and
will enable students to create more
complex sentences. The meanings of
basic prepositions and prepositional
phrases are incredibly easy to dem-
onstrate in a classroom and students
can often guess their meanings.
HOW TO PROCEED
1
WARM UP –
PREPOSITIONS
Use this opportunity to review vocab-
ulary you plan on using in this lesson.
In this example words including book,
desk, chair, clock, pencil, and teacher
would be good to review. Crisscross
is an excellent game to start the class
with. Have all the students stand. Ask
questions like “What is this?” while
holding up a pen or pointing to an ob-
ject. Have students volunteer to an-
swer by raising their hands. Choose
a student and if he answers correctly
he may sit down. Repeat until all stu-
dents are seated. In large classes the
volunteer can choose either his row
or column of students to sit. Usually
no more than about ten questions are
asked. The exercise should take ap-
proximately five minutes.
2 INTRODUCE – PREPOSI-
TIONS PRONUNCIATION
Write the target vocabulary on the
board. The words below are a good
set to begin with:
- in
- in front of
- on
- behind
- under
- above
- between
- next to
The vocabulary you introduce may
depend on the textbook being used.
Demonstrate the pronunciation of
each word one at a time having stu-
dents repeat it after you. If certain stu-
dents appear not to be participating,
call on them individually to pronounce
the word for the class. You may want
to start a chain where the first student
says the first vocabulary word, the
next student says the second, and the
third student says the third, etc until
all students have had the opportuni-
ty to say at least one word aloud. In
a small class feel free to repeat this
exercise several times and encour-
age them to speed up with each cycle
while still maintaining proper pronun-
ciation. Drilling is important however it
is often boring for students so adding
in some fun elements can encourage
them to participate.
3 INTRODUCE –
PREPOSITIONS MEANING
Try to have the students come up with
the meaning or translation of each
word. Use example sentences such
as “I am in front of the board. Now I
am in front of the desk. Now I am in
front of Jane.” and change your po-
sition in the classroom accordingly.
Use as many example sentences as
you can think of for each preposition
trying to get the students to guess its
meaning before writing it on the board
and moving onto the next one. Drill
pronunciation and translation before
continuing.
4 PRACTICE
To test comprehension, do a
short exercise. Tell students to put
their hands on their desks, above
their desk, behind their backs or to
put their books in their desks, under
their desks, etc. Perhaps a few stu-
dents would like to give it a try so why
not have them give a few instructions
as well. A simple worksheet where
students match prepositions with pic-
tures would be good practice as well.
5
INTRODUCE –
PREPOSITIONS Q & A
Ask students questions such as
“Where is my/your/the book/pen/desk/
clock?” Demonstrate the pronuncia-
tion of the question and answer. The
model dialogue for this lesson should
resemble the structure below:
- A: Where is (my/your/Sam’s/the)
(noun)?
- B: It’s (preposition) the (noun).
6 PRACTICE
Ask your students to practice
the model dialogue in pairs for about
five minutes taking turns being A and
B. Next ask for volunteers to demon-
strate their conversations and encour-
age them to be creative instead of be-
ing limited to the vocabulary you’ve
already used in the lesson. Correct
any errors with clear explanations and
demonstrations before moving on.
7 PRODUCTION
Ask students to write five sen-
tences using prepositions or use a
game for further practice of preposi-
tional phrases and sentence construc-
tion. An exercise like Jumbled (where
students work in groups to arrange a
set of words into five to ten sentenc-
es in a race against other groups) or
Scrambled (where students have a
worksheet with sentences written out
of order that they must rearrange)
would be great practice.
8
REVIEW
As a class review the exercise
from the previous step. Students can
volunteer to read one of their written
sentences aloud, groups can take
turns reading one of their sentences
from Jumbled, or students can read
their un-Scrambled sentences aloud.
Whatever exercise you’ve done, this
is a key stage in catching mistakes.
Often other students can assist their
peers in making corrections but if not
you may need to review certain prob-
lem areas.
PREPOSITIONS ARE EASILY
REVIEWED THROUGHOUT THE
SCHOOL YEAR BY BEING ADDED TO
RANDOM EXERCISES.
For instance, typically prepositions
would be covered before moving
onto the past or future tenses. Add-
ing prepositions to sentences used in
practicing those new tenses should
be an easy review for your students
and keep them aware of the use of
prepositions throughout their studies.
29
 7 Super Activities for Teaching
Prepositions of Location
UNDER, OVER, NEAR, FAR, TO, AT,
IN, ON...ENGLISH PREPOSITIONS
student then answers the question. can then ask them why they put each
“No, the clock is over the door.” building where they did. For example,
“Why is the school next to the library?”

3
OF LOCATION MAY BE THE FODDER WHERE IS IT? The group who made the map should
FOR BAD POETRY, BUT MORE answer their classmates’ questions.
LIKELY THEY ARE A KEY COMPO- Have students bring an unusual

NENT OF YOUR BEGINNING STU-
DENTS’ ENGLISH CURRICULUM.
These prepositions can be a chal-
lenge for English language students.
Some prepositions do not translate
from one language to another, and
even when they do they are often not
used in the same context.
The more practice you give your class
with these information packed words
the easier it will be for your students
to use them easily in conversation.
item to class or provide one yourself.
Then let students take turns hiding
the object in the classroom while the
other students hide their eyes. Once
the student is back in his seat, his
classmates ask questions using prep-
ositions of location to try to locate the
item. The person who hid the object
answers their questions until some-
one guesses correctly. The person
who guesses correctly gets to hide
the item for the next round.
7
EGG HUNT
Have an egg hunt in your
classroom — no matter what time of
year it is. Hide several plastic eggs
around your classroom (you can put
something inside them or leave them
empty). On your word, students start
looking for the eggs around the class-
room. When someone finds an egg,
he announces it to the class. He
should then tell the class where he
found it. “I found an egg. It was under

4
These 7 simple activities, most requir- DRAW IT
ing little to no preparation, can give
your students the practice they need This pair activity requires one
to be in the know when it comes to student to give directions to another
prepositions of location. student while he draws a picture. Give
one student a simple picture, which
HOW TO TEACH she will have her partner draw. She
PREPOSITIONS OF can look at the picture, but her part-
LOCATION: TRY ner can only listen to her directions as
THESE 7 SUPER EASY he draws. Encourage your students
ACTIVITIES to use prepositions of location as they
give their partners instructions. Then
the teacher’s chair.”
THESE ACTIVITIES ARE SIMPLE
ONES YOU CAN USE ANY TIME
YOU WANT TO REVIEW PREPOSI-
TIONS OF LOCATION WITH YOUR
STUDENTS.
Though perfect for beginning level
students who are just learning these
prepositions, they are also useful for
more advanced students who need a

1 LOOK AROUND
Have pairs of students take
have students switch roles with an-
other picture.
review or for filling a few minutes at
the end of class.

turns saying where items in the class-
room are without saying the object
itself. For example, a student could
say, “This object is over the door.”
The second student guesses which
item his partner is describing. “Is it the
clock?” If the student gets the answer
right, they switch roles. This is also
a good way to review vocabulary of
classroom objects.
5
A MESSY ROOM
Show your students a picture of
a messy bedroom. Ask them what is
wrong with the picture and where the
person’s items should be. For exam-
ple, if clothes are on the floor your stu-
dents would say, “The clothes should
be IN the closet.”

2 QUESTIONABLE
QUESTIONS
To practice prepositions of location in
question form, have pairs of students
work together in an activity similar to
the previous one. This time, though,
the first student asks a question about
a classroom item using a preposition
of location that does not describe the
object’s correct location. “Is the clock
under the trash can?” The second
6 GETTING AROUND TOWN
Have groups of three or four stu-
dents work together to create a map
of a fictional town. The map should
include typical buildings like a school,
library, police station, grocery store
and homes. Have students discuss
where each of the buildings should
be located on the map using preposi-
tions of location. Once the maps are
finished, have each group present
theirs to the class. Their classmates

30
7 Super Easy Activities for
Teaching Prepositions of Time
TIME FLIES WHEN YOU’RE HAVING
FUN, AND YOUR STUDENTS ARE
SURE TO HAVE A GOOD TIME WITH
THESE FUN FILLED ACTIVITIES THAT
TEACH PREPOSITIONS OF TIME!
TRY THESE 7 SUPER
EASY ACTIVITIES
FOR TEACHING
PREPOSITIONS OF
TIME
morning, in the afternoon, in the eve-
ning, and at night.” Divide your class
into two teams, and have one person
from each team come to the front of
the room to stand on either side of a
desk or table. Ask a question about an
activity most people do every day. For
example, “What time do most people
eat breakfast?” Students should race
to slap the table, and the first person
who gets her hand down answers with
one of the following: in the morning,
in the afternoon, in the evening or at
night. If a person gives the correct an-
own pieces of fiction. Encourage stu-
dents to write simple fictional stories
in ten sentences using a preposition
of time in each sentence. Once their
stories are written, students should cut
the sentences apart and shuffle them.
Then have students exchange stories
with a partner and put their partner’s
events in the correct sequence.

1 IN, ON OR AT
Put random times on slips of pa-
per including years, months, specific
dates and times. Each student takes
a turn drawing one of the times. He
swer, she scores a point for her team.
If she gives an incorrect answer, she
loses a point for her team. After every-
one in the class has had a turn, tally
the scores to see who wins.

must then tell the class what he was
doing at that time and must choose
the correct preposition of time to ex-
press himself. Examples: I was va-
cationing in June. I was studying on
Sunday. I was eating lunch at noon.
5
ROLL THE DICE
If you have a game store near
you, get some blank dice to use with
this fun preposition of time activity.
On one six sided die, write for, while,
and during on two sides each. On

2 CHECK YOUR CALENDAR

Have students fill out a calendar
with either real or fictional events in
their lives. Then, have pairs discuss
what they will be doing and at what
times. Students should choose the
the other die, write six different activi-
ties (draw a picture if you don’t have
enough room to write it out). Have a
student roll both dice and then com-
pose a sentence which uses both the
preposition and the event correctly.

6
appropriate preposition of time for
each event during their discussion
ROLL AGAIN
times. Using standard six sided dice,
have students take turns rolling two

3 WHAT CAME FIRST?

Bring some smiles to the class-
room when students use the Sunday
comics to practice the phrases “be-
fore that” and “after that”. Pairs of stu-
dents should choose one comic strip
and create a dialogue describing the
events in the pictures. They should
use “before that” and “after that” as
many times as possible in the dia-
logue. After about ten minutes, have
students present their dialogues to
the class.
dice two times. These two rolls rep-
resent two times of the day. After
her roll, each student must create a
sentence expressing the duration of
an event using those two times. She
should use the prepositions from and
to to express the duration of an activ-
ity she did or will do. For example, a
student might roll an 8 and a 4. She
would then say, “I will be at school
from 8 to 4.” You can also have stu-
dents use until and till when creating
their sentences.

4 WHAT TIME?
Set up a Family Feud style relay
to practice using the phrases “in the
7 WRITE ON
Have students put their knowl-
edge of prepositions of time together
with a little creativity as they write their

31
 Turn Right, Go Left: Practicing
Prepositions of Place
PREPOSITIONS OF PLACE IS ONE
OF THOSE TOPICS THAT CAN
REALLY OPEN UP A NEW WORLD
TO LEARNERS.
It is also a topic with lots of details and
possibilities for practice and imple-
mentation. Below are some strategies
for practicing prepositions of place fo-
cusing on location.
HOW TO PRACTICE
PREPOSITIONS OF
PLACE
1 USE MAPS
To introduce uses for preposi-
tions of place, it is essential to show
students the many functions it has in
their daily lives. One way to do that is
to present students with an overview
of a map of their city or town. You can
introduce compass directions, prepo-
sitions for giving directions as well
as prepositions of place and move-
ment. Maps are practical resource to
first discuss locations, distances and
placements. Then later students can
put maps into action. Another topic
that can arise out of using maps is
landmarks. Students generally know
the landmarks of their city, and it can
be great fun to utilize those landmarks
for direction-giving activities. There
are so many possibilities with maps.
You can give students the map of one
neighborhood and have them practice
going to and from one of the popular
landmarks. You can have them fill in
maps with local landmarks, street
names, and popular places like hotels,
grocery stores, libraries, etc. Once
they have the maps filled in, they can
then begin asking for and giving direc-
tions. This is a terrific review of all the
terminology for prepositions of place
and movement! Here is a list that you
could include for students to refer-
ence:
Movement:
Go straight/move forward
Turn right or left
On the highway
Exit to the left
Go through the light
32
Place:
On the corner
at the light/stop sign/train tracks
Across from
Next to
Behind/in front of
2
CREATE
AN OBSTACLE COURSE
If you have a fairly spacious class-
room and you take care to make sure
this activity stays safe, then by all
means go ahead and create an obsta-
cle course. First pinpoint a point A and
a point B. Point A is where students
will begin and point B is where stu-
dents want to end. Take a few chairs
and spread them out so the path from
point A to B is obstructed. Then put a
blindfold on one student, who will be
turned around a few times. Have an-
other student direct the first student
from point A to point B through the ob-
stacle course. You can vary the obsta-
cle course for each different student or
you can make it a team event. This is
an enjoyable activity that is safe pro-
vided students take their time and lis-
ten to the directions. It is also a worth-
while activity to debrief afterwards to
discuss the importance of understand-
ing directions, navigating difficulties,
and asking the right questions.
3
DIRECTIONS
FROM MEMORY
Close your eyes and think about the
route that you follow to get from your
home to your office. Could you tell
someone every step of that drive or
walk? This activity is a lot of fun sim-
ply because giving directions purely
by memory really isn’t that easy. One
way to make it even more engaging is
if students who live close to each oth-
er can work together to try to get every
step in movement absolutely correct.
You could also have the students try
to trip each other up, or find the gaps
in the directions. Another variation on
this one could be, for example, from
the classroom to the bathroom or from
the parking lot to the classroom. You
can dream up many ways to have stu-
dents give directions from memory. An
extension of this could be an assign-
ment to draw a map along with the
written directions from school to home
or home to work.
4
GPS AND GOOGLE MAPS
In this technological world, per-
haps many of your students are using
a GPS system to get around (and to
get lost). If they are not familiar with
a GPS and you have access to one
on your phone or otherwise, introduc-
ing the device to students could be
very enlightening. Take out the city
maps you provided them with ear-
lier and punch in an address close to
the classroom. Have students follow
where the GPS tells them to go on
their map to find out if it is accurate.
You could come up with several ways
to provide the class with examples,
and have students experiment with
the GPS.
You could also introduce Google Maps
or Map Quest. This is a handy re-
source that students could use in their
daily lives. It also gives them the ca-
pability to look at a map while simulta-
neously getting written directions. You
can do activities with your local city
or have some fun choosing famous
landmarks throughout the world and
locating them on a map. You can also
introduce them to the other features of
the maps (like search nearby or street
view) and open up a whole new world
to them. The possibilities with these
technological tools are endless, and
they could generate entertaining and
informative ways for students to ex-
plore their area and the world around
them!
WHEN IT COMES TO GETTING
AROUND AND FUNCTIONING OUT
IN THE WORLD WITH LIMITED LAN-
GUAGE, GIVING AND FOLLOWING
DIRECTIONS CAN BE A KEY PIECE
FOR STUDENTS TO GAIN SOME
INDEPENDENCE AND CONFIDENCE.
Take these ideas and make them as
hands-on and relevant as you can for
students immediate circumstances,
and they’ll navigate themselves right
into self-reliance.
Yes We Can Write! Putting Pen
to Paper for Beginners
Writing can often get overlooked in the
beginner ESL classroom. This may be
because students are focused on their
speaking and listening skills first, and
their reading and writing skills second.
There comes a time in every beginner
class to test the waters with writing to
see where your students’ writing skills
are, and to help them to enhance those
skills. Solid writing skills will help your
students increase their understanding
of the language, and learn how to ex-
press themselves in new ways.
GETTING BEGINNERS
TO PICK UP THE PEN
AND WRITE
1
START OUT SLOW
You will have different levels of
capabilities and some students may
not even have a basic grasp how to
spell simple words. Often beginners
have such limited vocabulary, writing
can feel very intimidating and so they
will need a lot of guidance. Don’t worry
too much at the very beginning about
grammar, spelling or punctuation. Let
it go for now. You will have plenty of
time to get into those details. Just get
them to write something down the first
few times.
2
REVIEW SIMPLE SENTENCE
STRUCTURES
You will want to begin by review-
ing simple sentence structures that
the students can model and prac-
tice. Point out the punctuation rules,
and review some of the grammatical
points you have been working on and
incorporate them into a writing activ-
ity. Present tense and Present Con-
tinuous are good ones to get students
writing. Review the grammar and the
differences.
Subject + Verb + Object = I like
ice cream. He is a teacher. John
is happy.
Subject + Verb to be + -ing = The
girl is dancing. The boy is singing.
We are learning.
There is a lot you can have students
write about that use just these two
main beginner grammar points.
3 USE VISUAL CUES
Using either pictures or real life
objects can greatly help students get
the pen moving. If they have some-
thing that they can look at for refer-
ence as they are working out what
they want to say, you will get better
results. Here is just one type of lesson
that can be adapted:
Use pictures from a magazine and
have each student pick one. Use a
combination of portraits, street scenes,
home scenes, and people doing activi-
ties, or anything that has some action
to it. First, have them write five sen-
tences about the picture on a loose
piece of paper. I find it best to give
them some direction, such as: write
five sentences about what is happen-
ing in the picture. Write five sentences
describing the picture. Write five sen-
tences using adjectives/action verbs/
present tense. You can come up with
your own ideas that fit the students’
level. Have a few students share what
they wrote and either write it up on the
board for them or have them write it up
there. You can go through and make
some gentle corrections as you have
another student read aloud what is
written on the board. Always collect
short writing activities so that you can
make all the necessary corrections.
4
PROGRESSIVELY GIVE
MORE DIFFICULT
WRITING EXERCISES
Don’t expect creative masterpieces
at the beginning, and be open to as-
sisting students express themselves.
In general, they will need help with
vocabulary, spelling, and expression.
Students will use very basic language,
but may also want to experiment with
some surprisingly advanced concepts.
Let them first explain what they are
trying to say and be their dictionary for
a time. As time progresses, give them
writing activities that are coupled with
grammar points, so that they can gain
a better understanding. A few tips on
where to progress are:
• Show students how to combine
two simple sentences with and, or,
or but, and how to punctuate.
• Explain adjective order and show
them how to utilize several new
adjectives in writing.
• Show students how to incorporate
more than one tense into a para-
graph. For example: I like run-
ning. When I run I feel happy and
healthy. When I am running I like
to feel the sun. Next year I think
I would like to run in a marathon.
• Introduce future tense and have
them write on any number of top-
ics. Things like: what is your goal
for the coming year? What dreams
do you have for your future? What
career will you have in 5 years?
5
INTRODUCE THE DICTION-
ARY AND THESAURUS
As students continue on their journey
of putting pen to paper, it is a wonder-
ful idea to give them resources to im-
prove their work on their own. First in-
troduce the dictionary, and make sure
that you have a few good copies for
them to use while in class. Many stu-
dents already utilize electronic diction-
aries, but getting them to use a hard-
copy can greatly help them increase
their vocabulary. Thesauruses are also
great resources and can eliminate the
frustration of limited (and pretty bor-
ing) word usage. You can incorporate
activities with both books into writing
activities and give students homework
that will get them comfortable consult-
ing the books while they are writing.
TEACHING BEGINNER STUDENTS TO
PUT PEN TO PAPER WILL PROVE TO
BE A GREAT CONFIDENCE BUILDER
FOR MANY OF THEM, AND A WAY
FOR YOU FIND OUT WHICH STU-
DENTS MAY HAVE LARGER ISSUES
WITH LITERACY.
When you are crafting your activities
and asking your students to put them-
selves out there remember that it can
be challenging for native speakers to
sit down and write. It takes a lot of
courage, but both the teacher and the
students will see great rewards!
33
 Wish You Were Here: Beginning
Level Writing Made Simple
FOR STUDENTS WHO ARE LEARNING
ENGLISH AS A SECOND LANGUAGE,
PRACTICAL AND REAL LIFE SKILLS
ARE EXTREMELY IMPORTANT.
We teachers strive to bring realia into
the classroom, give them experience
speaking in real life situations and
reading English text written for native
speakers. These are valuable expe-
riences for our classes, but we may
find that writing, for beginning level
students, is more abstract or has little
real life applications. The good news
some examples, tell them that they
are going to write their own postcard,
in English, and that you will walk them
through each step of the process. The
first step is to think about words that
can be used when describing vaca-
tions. Make a list on the board that
your students can reference later.
Encourage them to think about words
that might describe the weather, the
location, the food they might eat or
activities they might choose to do on
vacation.
where you are staying, what you al-
ready did on your vacation, something
interesting about the place or what
you have done. For example, your
message might read, “We are at the
Jersey shore. The skies are always
blue. We are spending lots of time on
the beach. Our hotel is very close to
the water. We went to a craft show
yesterday. The people in New Jersey
have been very friendly.” Postcards
traditionally close their message
with the sentiment, “Wish you were
here.” Have your students write that

4
is beginning level writing does not
CHOOSE phrase and then close with “Sincerely,
have to be disconnected from real- ______”.
ity. By walking through the following YOUR DESTINATION

steps for writing a postcard, your stu- Now your students will choose their
dents will have a chance to practice imaginary vacation destination. It can
their beginning level writing skills in a be a place they have been, a place
practical situation. they want to visit, or a place that ex-
ists only in their imaginations. Give
HOW TO TEACH A each person a sheet of poster board,
POSTCARD WRITING card stock or other thick paper. A half
LESSON TO BEGINNER sheet of standard sized paper works
LEVEL STUDENTS well. Then, have your students draw
7
DISPLAY YOUR CARDS
If you like, punch a hole in the
top of your students’ postcards and
thread some string or yard through the
hole. You can now hang the postcard
from the ceiling in your classroom and
students will be able to see each side!

1
START THINKING
Get your students thinking about
experiences they may have had get-
ting postcards. Write the following
questions on the board and put stu-
dents into groups of three or four to
discuss the answers.
- Did someone ever send you a
post card?
- Who sent it to you?
- Why did they send it?
- How did it make you feel?
a picture on the card of the place they
want to visit. This is the front, or the
picture portion, of their postcard.
IF YOUR STUDENTS CAN WRITE SIX
SIMPLE SENTENCES, THEY HAVE
5
ADDRESS THE CARD WHAT IT TAKES TO WRITE SOME-
You will need to model the rest THING WE SEE IN EVERYDAY LIFE.
When they do, they will have confi-
of the steps in writing a postcard for
dence in the language that they are
your students. The first step is to turn
the card over and write the address learning, and you might just get to see
on the card. You may want to encour- some of their creativity come out, too.
age your students to select some- So make school a little more like va-
one who attends your school as the cation and write some postcards this
recipient of their postcard. Then use summer!
the school address, and show your
students how to write it on the right

2 SHOW AND TELL

Bring in some examples of real
postcards for your students to look at
before writing their own. Encourage
side of your model. After writing the
address, have students start their
message with “Dear _____” on the left
side of the card.

your students to note what type of in-
formation the postcards contain. Do
they see any similarities among the
notes? Do they notice conventions
used for addressing the postcards?
6
WRITE YOUR MESSAGE
You can give your students a
simple, seven sentence formula for
writing their postcard message. Mod-
eling for your students, write one short

3 GET READY
Once your students are think-
sentence in the blank space on each
of the following topics: where you are,
what it is like, what you are doing,
ing about postcards and have seen

34
5 Easy Listening Games
for ESL Beginners
ESL BEGINNERS MAY NOT BE ABLE
TO SAY A WHOLE LOT, AFTER ALL
THEIR VOCABULARY AND GRAMMAR
ARE RATHER LIMITED. BUT IN ORDER
TO START SPEAKING, THEY HAVE TO
START LISTENING.
And not just listening to the correct
pronunciation, intonation and stress.
I mean really listening. Listening for
meaning. Listening for context. Listen-
ing for real comprehension.
You may think there isn’t a whole lot
beginners can comprehend, but you’ll
be surprised. Try playing these simple
listening games. They may be easy,
but for students who are just starting
out in their English learning journey,
they can be highly effective ways to
train in the basic skills they will use on
a daily basis in the near future!
HOW TO HELP ESL
BEGINNERS IMPROVE
THEIR LISTENING
SKILLS: 5 EASY GAMES
1 LISTEN FOR IT!
One of the most essential listen-
ing skills your students should develop
involves listening for key information,
which often includes numbers, facts,
hours, dates or other essential info. To
help them train for this skill, first give
them some context: You will listen to
a man asking for information at the
train station. Then, before they listen,
give them something they will have to
find out: What time does the train to
Boston leave? Now here comes the
“game” aspect of it. You can:
Divide the class into teams and have
a team member raise their hand/ring a
bell as soon as they hear the answer.
Then, you do the same with another
short audio track. You ask a question
and play the audio - the team that an-
swers first gets a point. And the team
with the most points at the end wins.
Have each student participate individ-
ually, but make sure everyone partici-
pates, not the same students over and
over again.
2 UNMUSICAL CHAIRS
This easy listening game works
great with young learners. Arrange
chairs as if to play musical chairs. Stu-
dents will walk around them, but in this
case they won’t be listening to a song.
They will listen to a conversation. As
always, give them the context and
ask them a question: What is Tom’s
favorite food? Students walk around
the chairs as you play the audio and
the student/s who hear the answer
to the question sit/s down. Pause the
audio. Those who are seated answer
the question, and if it’s correct they
will remain seated. If several students
sit down at the same time, that’s fine,
but ask them to whisper the answer in
your ear to make sure they all heard
the answer from the audio.
Ask another question (whose answer
will come up next in the audio). The
students who were left standing now
walk around the chairs till they hear
the answer. Go on asking questions
and giving students the opportunity
to secure a seat. The last student left
standing, like the usual game of musi-
cal chairs is left out of the next round.
A chair is removed from the circle and
so it continues until you have one chair
and two students competing to answer
the final question.
It’s convenient to have the script of the
audio so it’s easier for you to ask the
questions. Also, bear in mind you will
play longer with a longer audio, but
you can also play with several short
ones. The game will go much faster
if several students sit down (have the
answer) at the same time, but only
those who got it right should remain
seated.
3
WHICH ONE IS IT?
Something that is particularly dif-
ficult for ESL students is listening to
the subtle differences between words
that have a different, but similar spell-
ing. These are words like leave/live, fill/
feel, tree/three, fit/feet, etc. So here’s
a great game you can play. Have a set
of cards printed out with these trouble-
some words. Divide the class into two
teams. Students take turns. You place
the two cards on the desk in front of
them: live and leave. Say one of the
words out loud: live. If the student
chooses the right card, the team gets
2 points. Now, if the student is unsure,
he/she may choose to request “an
example”, i.e. the word used in a sen-
tence: I live a few blocks from here. If
the student chooses the right card in
this case, the team gets 1 point.
4 WORD OF MOUTH
Here’s another game you can
play with the same easily confused
words from above. Divide students
into two teams. Whisper a word to a
student, who must then whisper it to
the student next to him/her, and so it
goes until the last student in line hast
to say the word out loud. If he/she pro-
nounces it correctly, the team gets a
point.
A variation of this would be not to whis-
per to the first student but show him/
her the word written down on a piece
of paper.
5
STEP BY STEP
Another important listening skill
students must develop is learning to
understand step by step instructions.
Try this fun listening game, which also
helps them practice asking for and giv-
ing directions. You’ll need a “city map”:
you can use a real map, or better yet
create one with your students’ desks,
so they have actual “streets” to walk
on. Start at any give point, say the
“bank”, and have a students ask for di-
rections to another location. Tell them
how to get there. The student must
trace his/her finger along the route you
indicated, or walk all the way there.
Students who manage to reach their
destination/don’t get lost win points!
FROM THESE EXAMPLES YOU CAN
SEE THAT’S IT NOT DIFFICULT TO
MAKE LISTENING PRACTICE INTO A
GAME, ONE THAT IS NOT ONLY FUN,
BUT ALSO GIVES YOUR ESL STU-
DENTS THE LISTENING SKILLS THEY
NEED TO SUCCEED.
35
The Right Stuff: 3 Brilliant
Beginner Listening Activities
ENGAGING BEGINNER LEVEL STU-
DENTS WITH USEFUL LISTENING
EXERCISES IS CRUCIAL TO THEIR
SUCCESS AS LEARNERS AND CON-
TINUED DEVELOPMENT.
Listening tends to be an extreme area
of challenge for these students and it
is necessary to bring in brilliant, bright
listening activities to build confidence
and stimulate conversation.
For any listening exercise it is essen-
tial that the directions and the aims are
clearly defined. The exercises should
always contain communication tasks
so that learners are actively listening
and also using their listening skills to
speak up. Some options might be to
have listeners obtain facts, find the
main idea, follow directions, or display
general understanding in order to re-
spond or craft questions.
TRY THESE 3
BRILLIANT LISTENING
ACTIVITIES WITH YOUR
BEGINNER STUDENTS
1
CHINESE WHISPERS OR
TELEPHONE
Chinese Whispers, otherwise known
as Telephone is a popular and eas-
ily adaptable game that can lead to a
lot of fun listening and speaking. The
game consists of one phrase or line
being whispered from student to stu-
dent until the end when they discover
if they were able to replicate it accu-
rately. The bigger the line of people the
whisper must go through the more hu-
morous and numerous the errors will
be. The rules of the game are simple,
but you could always add more guide-
lines if you want to make play more
challenging. First, students must whis-
per the phrase or sentence to each
other. Second, it is a good idea to have
a list of the phrases, sentences or say-
ings that you want students to practice.
You could write them on cards or on
folded pieces of paper. You want to
make sure that only the person who
begins has access to the card. Often
with beginners, the teacher should be
the originator of the sentence that will
go around. It not only takes the pres-
36
sure off student number one, but it
ensures that the sentence is read cor-
rectly at least once. However, once
the class has played a few rounds,
it’s wise to challenge the first student
to decipher the message on the card
and then whisper it to the next person.
The whispering is an interesting ele-
ment because students are not used
to talking so quietly and it takes more
effort to annunciate when whispering.
It’s not just a listening exercise, but one
that focuses on speaking and the mis-
communication that can so often occur
during communications. Students of all
ages and levels really get a kick out of
the game Telephone.
2
STORY-TELLING
Storytelling, even in a very simple
form demonstrates natural language,
and on-the-spot comprehension. Start
out by explaining that you are going
to tell a brief story about something
that happened in your life the previous
week. For example: “I went to Prague
this weekend. I met some friends and
had a great time.” It is then the stu-
dents job to think of questions to gain
more detail about your experience.
They should refer back to the board
for question structures, and utilize Wh-
questions like who, what, where and
when. After they have exhausted all
the options of questioning, tell them
your story utilizing all the answers to
the questions that they asked you. This
shows them not only how to tell a story,
but what details to include, and how to
listen and ask for specific details.
If you want to add more detail to this
activity, you could put students in pairs
and have each partner talk briefly
about something that happened to him/
her last week. The second member
of the pair listens and asks follow up
questions trying to form a question for
each of the six Wh- information ques-
tion words. The first member answers
the follow-up questions, elaborating on
the story as initially told. Members of
the pair switch roles so each person
has a chance to tell a story and answer
questions.
This activity can be adapted for differ-
ent grammar points, and is especially
good for practicing beginning tenses.
Students could talk about their daily
routine, explain their family, outline a
future goal or challenge, or explain a
sequence. This activity can be as short
or as detailed as you desire, and stu-
dents can put their own spin on the sto-
ries as well as the questions.
3 INTERVIEWS
Putting students into pairs to do
short, simple interviews on a variety of
topics is a wonderful way to get them
acquainted while they are speaking
and listening intently. For beginners
interviews should focus on question
creation, tense work, and familiar vo-
cabulary. Because beginners often rely
heavily upon using exactly the struc-
tures that are detailed out for them,
interviews challenge them to combine
everything they are learning into one
conversation. Any chance to work on
different types of questions and how
to create them will be an invaluable
resource for students at this level.
You can organize interviews by giving
groups of words that they must then
create into questions and ask their
partner. For example family/weekend
would lead to questions about what the
family did this weekend, perhaps utiliz-
ing some question types written out on
the board. You could also do interviews
that are more free-form, where you
give the students a topic like hobbies.
They would then ask each other 5 to
7 questions on that topic. With any in-
terview, you want to be sure that each
half of the pair takes turns asking the
questions. You will also want to be sure
to build in time for each set of pairs to
debrief or paraphrase what they dis-
cussed to the larger group.
LISTENING EXERCISES FOR BEGIN-
NERS ARE CENTRAL TO THEIR LAN-
GUAGE DEVELOPMENT AND EACH
AND EVERY CLASS SHOULD INCOR-
PORATE MANY DIFFERENT EXER-
CISES FOCUSED ON LISTENING.
Keep students involved, motivated,
and listening to one another for stellar
results!
How to Teach Present Simple
to Complete Beginners
At the outset new students are con-
vinced that they cannot communicate
in English at all, but by the end of this
lesson they will hopefully be able to
confidently introduce themselves to
anyone they meet in a simple and yet
meaningful way.
HOW TO PROCEED
1 INTRODUCTION
There is no warm up activity to
introduce any grammatical term or vo-
cabulary. Assume that your students
have limited linguistic knowledge, or
none whatsoever.
Write the substitution tables on
the board. Get it right from the start.
Make sure they have a model to prac-
tice and follow. Maybe they know the
structures already but it’s good to re-
inforce the grammar and if they are
real novices they will need to follow
your guidance. Keep it basic. You are
teaching the verbs ‘to be’ and ‘to do’
only – which will form the foundations
of their learning.
2 PRE-TEACH PRONOUNS
Ensure they know pronouns or
you will be wasting a lot of valuable
time. Use gestures, mime, pictures
etc. to elicit or re-iterate grammar out-
lines.
There is often confusion with the mas-
culine/feminine form. Teach ‘I am.
You are (singular). He/She/It is.
We are. You are. They are (plu-
rals).’ Show contractions – ‘I’m etc.’
3 ELICITING NAMES
You write your name on the
whiteboard. First name only. Ask your
students ‘’What’s my name?’ ‘What
is my name?’ Repeat. You may get
a whole host of answers ‘Michael /
You are Michael / You’re Michael /
Your name is Michael / Mr Michael
/ Teacher Michael etc. Correct the
errors and write clearly on the board
‘My name is Michael.’ ‘I am Mi-
chael. I’m Michael’
Teacher models Q & A. Ask all the
students their names – going ran-
domly around the class. Make sure
that there is plenty of movement and
friendly gesturing with an open hand.
No pointing. Get your students moti-
vated and animated. Stress that you
need first names only. It’s much more
friendly.
Now introduce family names. Write
your name on the board – Angelo.
Then present the full sentence ‘My
name is Michael Angelo.’ Advise
your students that this is the stan-
dard format in English, as there are
cultural differences e.g. in Japan the
surname precedes the given name.
Repeat the exercise with all the stu-
dents - ‘What’s my name?’ Get full
and abbreviated answers. Repeat
many times around the class.
4
PRACTICE TIME
‘What’s his name?’ ‘What’s
her name?’ Get students up and do-
ing a mingling activity. Get them to re-
port back to you the names they have
learned. This is fun, practical and
breaks the ice in a new group. Can
they remember the people they have
been introduced to? This is the time to
check. Practice for as long as you feel
necessary.
Don’t assume they have mastered
this first step easily, as you will often
find later that the elementary work is
quickly forgotten.
5 REVIEW ON THE BOARD
Ensure you match your spoken
practice with written examples. Do
concept checking for your question
practice. ‘What’s his name?’ Show
contractions on the board. ‘His name
is ...’ or ‘He’s ....’
Ask your group to chorally answer/
move around the class and ask stu-
dents randomly.
6 EXPLAINING JOBS
Ask the class “What do I do?’
‘What’s my job?’ As students an-
swer, make sure you write the answer
on the board for future reference.
‘You are an English Teacher.’
Get them to repeat and point out the
‘an’ article if it has been omitted. Ask
all the students individually ‘What
do you do?’ You may not be able to
elicit, so you will have to introduce the
relevant vocabulary. It would be use-
ful to have pictures, or flashcards of
popular jobs to provide a point of ref-
erence especially for visual learners.
Get your students to answer correctly
and move pairs around to incorporate
group practice. Ask and report back
their findings. Teacher asks group
members as a whole and then calls
randomly on specific students e.g.
‘What does Manuel do?’ Response
– ‘He’s an engineer.’ Practice/drill
articles ‘a’ and ‘an.’
7
DESCRIBING
WHERE YOU LIVE
Ask your students ‘Where do I live?’
Use body language and drawings to
show your home’s location. The stu-
dents probably don’t know, so you
want them to ask and therefore elicit
the question ‘Where do you live?’
Demonstrate on the board the word
order. The name of your street, etc. -
the smallest place first – village/town/
city. Get students to ask their partners
and then practice by doing a milling
activity. Get feedback. Students re-
port back where the other students
live. ‘She lives in ....’ Be alert be-
cause the preposition is often missed
or dropped
8
INTRODUCE HOBBIES
‘What do you do in your free
time?’ Elicit hobbies vocabulary from
students and write on the whiteboard.
Have pictures/ flashcards etc. Use
gestures and mime. Have fun but fo-
cus on simplicity.
37
 How to Teach the Verb “To Be”
to Beginners
THE VERB “TO BE” IS THE FIRST
VERB STUDENTS LEARN IN THEIR
ENGLISH STUDIES.
It is used extensively in the English
language and will allow students to
create simple sentences with the vo-
cabulary they have learned to date.
HOW TO PROCEED
1 WARM UP
For this first lesson, it is best to
focus on only the I, You, He/She/It
structures which you can build upon
in later classes. If students have not
really done a lot of activities with the
words he, she, and it, you may want
to consider simply using names in the
practice activities. Once you have de-
termined what you would like to cover
in the first lesson, use the warm up
activity to review the vocabulary stu-
dents will need later on in the lesson.
A short simple drill activity would be
ideal.
2 INTRODUCE VOCABULARY
During the introduction section
of your lesson, introduce any new vo-
cabulary you plan to use in this lesson.
Some emotions and adjectives would
be good because students will then
be able to form complete meaningful
sentences. Introduce words such as
happy and sad if students have not
yet learned them. Use flashcards to
drill vocabulary and have students
complete some simple worksheet ac-
tivities for further practice.
3 INTRODUCE “TO BE”
Show students how to make
sentences such as “I am happy. You
are happy. Jenny is happy.” En-
sure that students understand how
the subject and forms of the verb are
paired. You can practice this before
introducing the full sentence struc-
ture you would like students to learn.
Call on students to make sentences
choosing a subject, verb, and adjec-
tive from columns on the board.
38
Without introducing the question form
“Is she happy?” you can use such
questions to test comprehension and
students should understand what you
are asking. Have them answer by
saying “Yes, she is happy.” so that
they continue to practice saying the
target structure.
4 PRACTICE SIMPLE
You can use worksheets for
practice. Have students complete a fill
in the blank exercise where they must
choose am, is, or are to complete sen-
tences to ensure that they understand
which form of the verb agrees with
certain subjects. You can also have
students match sentences with im-
ages or with translations for practice
and to test comprehension. As a class
check the answers before continuing
on.
5
PRACTICE COMPLEX
Students can then complete
an activity such as Battleship for
further practice. You can adapt this
classic game for use in the class-
room. While it can be time consum-
ing to explain, especially to beginners,
your students will enjoy playing and it
can be used to practice a wide vari-
ety of topics. To play Battleship stu-
dents should work in pairs using a
worksheet. For this class, the grids on
the worksheet might have I, You, He,
She, Jenny, Ms. Smith in the first
column and happy, fun, from Korea,
sad, silly, from America in the first
row. Students then practice sentenc-
es such as “I am silly.” to try to locate
and sink all of their opponents ships
first.
There may not be enough time in the
first lesson to begin this activity but
devoting the second lesson entirely
to Battleship would give your students
lots of speaking practice.
For a third class, introduce the ques-
tion that goes along with this target
structure and have students play us-
ing the same worksheet but by mak-
ing questions such as “Is Ms. Smith
from America?” The really great
thing about this activity is that stu-
dents essentially have to speak in or-
der to play whereas with board games
students may be tempted to simply
roll the dice and move their pieces
around the board without really prac-
ticing English.
6 REVIEW
As a general review activity you
can divide students into groups and
play Hangman with sentences or
words from their textbook. It is per-
haps not appropriate to play the origi-
nal game in your classroom so you
can just adapt it so that no one actu-
ally hangs. One adaptation is to sim-
ply have a very large fish where when
students guess incorrectly, a little fish
gets closer and closer to being eaten.
This is not very accurate as you can
either draw the game out or end it
whenever you choose.
Another method of playing is to as-
sign a point value to certain things.
For example, if a group guesses the
letter a and there are three in the
sentence, the group would get three
points. A correct guess of the entire
sentence would be five points while
there should be a penalty for guess-
ing the entire phrase incorrectly but
no penalty for guessing a letter that
is not used. You can alter the scor-
ing anyway you would like to make it
more appropriate for your class.
ONCE YOUR STUDENTS ARE QUITE
CONFIDENT WITH MAKING THE
SENTENCES PRACTICED IN THIS
LESSON, YOU SHOULD INCLUDE THE
PLURAL WE, YOU, THEY AS WELL.
AS THE FIRST VERB THEY STUDY,
“TO BE” IS VERY IMPORTANT FOR
YOUR STUDENTS AND IT IS ESSEN-
TIAL TO GET THEM TO UNDERSTAND
THAT THE FORM OF THE VERB IS
AFFECTED BY THE SUBJECT OF THE
SENTENCE.
How to Teach the Past Simple
Tense – Verb to Be
“TO BE OR NOT TO BE?” IS THE QUES-
TION PONDERED BY THE MELAN-
CHOLY HAMLET. ON THE OTHER
HAND, AN ESL TEACHER MIGHT ASK:
HOW DO I TEACH THE SIMPLE PAST
OF THE VERB TO BE, WITHOUT NEED-
LESSLY CONFUSING MY STUDENTS?
It’s all rather simple. Follow a step by
step process, and don’t move on to
next step until you’re sure your stu-
dents have mastered the one you’re
currently on.
HOW TO PROCEED
1 INTRODUCE THE PAST
SIMPLE OF THE VERB TO BE
- FIRST PERSON SINGULAR
Begin by asking your students, “Where
am I?” They should answer, “You’re
in class/at school.” Introduce the past
simple of the verb to be like this:
T: Yesterday at this time, I was at home.
Go around the class, and have stu-
dents take turns saying where they
were the previous day in the first per-
son singular.
2 INTRODUCE THE PAST
SIMPLE OF THE VERB TO BE
- THIRD PERSON SINGULAR
Go around the class and say where
each student was, giving examples in
the third person singular: Sarah was
at home. John was at the gym. Bobby
was at a friend’s house. Etc...Students
continue by saying where some of their
family members were: My mom was at
home. My dad was at work. My sister
was at the park.
3
INTRODUCE THE PAST
SIMPLE OF THE VERB TO BE
- SECOND PERSON SINGULAR
Go around the class and now make
statements in the second person sin-
gular, addressing each student: Sarah,
you were at home. John, you were at
the gym. Each student points to one
classmate and says where he or she
was.
7 INTRODUCE THE PAST
SIMPLE OF THE VERB TO BE
4
DO THE SAME
– SHORT ANSWERS
FOR THE PLURAL PERSONS
Ask yes or no questions and teach stu-
Get all of those who were at home to- dents to give short answers:
gether and say, “We were at home.”
Do the same for “you (pl.)” and “they”:
T: Were you at school last night?
John and Tom, you were at the gym. S: Yes, I was./No, I wasn’t.
Bobby and his cousin were at a friend’s
house. They were there till 6 pm. Give
If time allows, ask them to provide
as many examples as needed to make more complete answers.
sure students grasp the conjugation.
T: Were you at school last night? S:
5 INTRODUCE THE PAST Yes, I was./No, I wasn’t. I was at home.
SIMPLE OF THE VERB TO BE
– NEGATIVE FORMS
Say, “Yesterday at this time, I was at
8 PROVIDE LOTS
OF EXTENDED PRACTICE
home. I wasn’t at school.” Give more Try giving your students this worksheet
examples alternating between affirma- to review what they’ve learned. And
tive and negative statements: Sarah, here’s another with several exercises,
you were at home. You weren’t at the one of which asks students to complete
gym. John was at the gym. He wasn’t affirmative, and negative sentences,
at school. And so on with all persons, as well as write questions.
singular and plural. Then have stu-
dents do the same, always alternat- FOR PRACTICAL PURPOSES, THE
ing between affirmative and negative EXAMPLES ABOVE ALL COVER
statements. LOCATION (AT HOME/AT SCHOOL).
BUT YOU MAY ALSO PRACTICE THE
6
INTRODUCE THE PAST SIMPLE PAST OF THE VERB TO BE
WITH FEELINGS (I WAS HAPPY/
SIMPLE OF THE VERB TO BE
– INTERROGATIVE FORMS SAD), THE WEATHER (YESTERDAY
WAS SUNNY/HOT/WINDY), OR
Model questions like this: OPINIONS (THE MOVIE WAS GOOD/
BAD/GREAT), JUST TO NAME A FEW
OPTIONS.
T: Where were you at 10 o’clock last
night?
S: I was at home.
T: Ask me!
S: Where were you at 10 o’clock last
night?
Continue with more questions from
students. Encourage them to ask what
time, where, when, why, etc. First, they
ask you (second person singular, then
they ask classmates, then they ask a
classmate about another classmate
(Where was Sheila last night?), and
so on. Make sure they ask questions
in all persons, both singular and plural.
If they are unsure as to how to ask a
question, model it for them first.
39